She had a vision of herself living in Paris. Now this American woman calls it home

(CNN) — Each time she steps out of her apartment in Montmartre and heads to the tiny courtyard around the corner, Michelle Harris has no idea how long the errand will take.

“I could be gone for two minutes, or maybe an hour, particularly in the summer,” Harris, originally from Virginia, tells CNN Travel, explaining that it’s almost impossible to simply say “Hi” if a neighbor stops her.

“The French people are so engaging … If they stop you, they talk to you. They’re interested in what you’re doing. Even taking the garbage out.”.

Harris, who moved to Paris permanently in 2020, says she has been “so embraced” by the local community and feels “very well looked after.”

She describes Montmartre, in the city’s 18th arrondissement neighborhood, as having a “village environment” and particularly enjoys spending time at a neighborhood bar called Chez Ammad, which has hosted the likes of French singer Edith Piaf.

Life-changing journey

“I know everybody that works there, so it’s like ‘Cheers’…” she says, referring to the US sitcom set in a Boston bar. “I’m never alone. It’s such an interesting life.”

After feeling unrooted and sad for a long time, she now feels certain she is where she belongs.

Harris never planned to live in Paris. She arrived “almost by accident” a few years after seeing a vision of herself there during a spiritual experience on a trip to Peru.

Before that life-changing journey, she had been focused on a corporate career in the pharmaceutical industry, relocating to cities like St. Louis for work before settling in New York.

After suffering “three personal losses in a row,” including the unexpected death of her father and the loss of a long-held job, Harris began reevaluating her life.

“It was kind of like this lesson in, you can’t control anything,” she says. “No matter what you do, it can slip through your fingers.”

Though she secured another role and tried to move forward, something had shifted.

“I realized I can’t put all this back together again,” Harris adds. “And I kind of took a look at my situation and said, ‘I’m going to blow everything up. I’m going to do something entirely different.’”

Her idea of blowing things up was to quit her “demanding job,” sell her apartment, buy a one-way ticket to Asia and “just start voyaging.”

In January 2016, she headed to Japan, then traveled “south through all of Asia,” before continuing to Australia, South Africa and Europe.

Still consumed by grief, she began experimenting with new ways to confront it.

Harris decided to try ayahuasca, also known as “yage,” a mind-altering concoction taken in the Amazon jungle that is illegal in the US and reported to have beneficial effects for conditions such as depression and anxiety.

“I felt like I had been exhausting everything there is to do,” she says. “The world is a beautiful, magical place. But I was looking for things that were more experiential.”

She traveled to Peru in 2017 and into the Amazon, where a shaman guided her through meditations as part of a ritual ceremony.

Harris says she saw a vision of her father, which helped her come to terms with his death, and she is now “able to speak of him and not just start crying.”

Vision of Paris

“I was able to put the grief aside,” she adds. “And that was incredible.”

She says she also saw other visions. One that stood out was of herself living in Paris.

At the time, Harris didn’t believe this would be her fate. She had studied Spanish in high school and had always struggled with French.

“I couldn’t pronounce a thing. I didn’t understand the vowels … It just seemed unlikely )that I would live there,” she says, recalling how a former boyfriend had been left embarrassed by her French during a visit years earlier.

“But I’ll be darned if that’s not what happened.”

As she continued traveling, buoyed by her “newfound spirituality,” Harris returned home periodically to see loved ones and realized she “did not feel tethered” in the US anymore.

She bought a small apartment in Manhattan that she “could return to and call home,” and continued exploring the world.

While traveling through Europe in 2017, she decided to make Paris her “base.”

She began a relationship with a man in the city “and started to develop a life there,” enrolling in French language classes and immersing herself in daily life.

During this time, she began to “see Paris differently” and felt increasingly at home.

After that relationship ended, Harris fell for another man in Paris and later entered into a contractual civil union, known as a French Pacte Civil de Solidarité, or PACS.

Although that union also ended, she realized that despite the “heartbreaks,” life in the city suited her and she wanted to stay.

“It was almost like I just got woven in through these relationships that didn’t work out,” she adds.

She feels her personality shifts there, joking that she lives in “a mild state of confusion,” unlike in New York, where she feels like a “boss.”

“I had a friend come to visit, and she said, ‘You sound different in French …’” she recounts. “‘Your voice is a higher pitch, and it’s sweeter.’”

Harris says her relationship with the language is evolving.
She jokes that she “abuses the French people every day” with her French, but she is persevering.

She has otherwise adapted easily, embracing the custom of lingering over meals and a “serious, good conversation.”

“I love my French friends, but as one of them said to me, ‘If you go to a party and you don’t get in three arguments, it wasn’t a good party,’ And it’s true,” she adds.

For Harris, one of the biggest differences between life in France and the US is the belief in individual rights, which she sees as deeply rooted in the nation’s history.

She notes that “video surveillance that would capture the goings-on of our neighbors” is regulated by law in France, unlike “the ubiquitous doorbell cameras in the US.”

“The ideology of the Liberty is refreshing …” she says, adding that she has begun to “feel differently” about her own rights while living in Paris.

Harris considers the cost of living in Paris affordable compared with New York, though she acknowledges that “so many people come and are like, ‘Wow, it’s so expensive.’”

Melting pot

In 2022, she purchased her Montmartre apartment for just over 300,000 euros, or around $350,000, and has since spent a further 90,000 euros on renovations.

She describes the area as a “melting pot” and enjoys living among people of different cultures and nationalities.

“I want to see people that don’t look like me, don’t talk like me and don’t do all the things that I do…” she says, noting that this was also something she valued about New York. “And you get that in Paris.”

While she considers New York “absurdly expensive nowadays,” Harris says she still loves the city and has kept her Manhattan apartment.

She returns to the US regularly to visit family and friends but does not “have any desire to move back.”

Harris, who has written a book, “Lovers & Boyfriends,” about her experiences in the City of Love, was previously on a long-stay visa but switched last year to a Pluriannuelle Titre de Séjour — Artists Visa, or “passeport talent.”

Looking back on her travels, Harris says she was constantly asking herself, “Am I where I’m supposed to be?” In Paris, the answer is “Yes.”

“I don’t think I could live anywhere else…” she says, conceding that perhaps London could be a possibility, but she’s very happy where she is.

“After New York and Paris, where are you going to go?”

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