By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN
(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