CALLICOON — Born and raised in France, Cecile Lamy left work late Friday, November 13, and headed home to Damascus, PA. Suddenly voicemails and text messages from American friends flooded her cell phone. Eight assailants equipped with explosive belts and assault rifles attacked six precisely chosen targets in France's capital.

A friend of her niece, Cecile knew, was seeing the Eagles of Death Metal show at the Bataclan that fated evening. The owners of the Bataclan - a woman and two men - were friends of her uncle. Her mother Francoise, a resident of the 5th arrondissement of Paris a few miles away from the destruction and death in the 12th, was unlikely to be out in the affected area at that time. Were her four Parisian cousins spared?

Cecile reached Francoise safe in her apartment. She had already accounted for three cousins. Hours after the Stade de France stadium explosion, the fourth cousin - Pierre-Yves, a musician - finally marked himself “Safe” on Facebook. The social network had launched during the Paris attacks a new feature - “Safety Check” - that was put in place after the Nepal earthquake.

Francoise described what she had heard about the cafe where gunmen shot dead 19 people, most dining al fresco by candlelight. Cecile absorbed “shocking, revolting” images and rumors of the carnage spreading online.

“I was completely shocked by how easily horror could strike Paris again,” said Cecile. “We had just lived through the Charlie Hebdo massacre 10 months earlier. This time, the attacks were even worse, killing 130 and many more injured.”

Family friends were among the injured. At the Bataclan, the granddaughter of a family friend who was studying to become an orthopedic surgeon lost her arm. Two other friends survived gunshot wounds to the hand and arm. Friends of Cecile's cousin Marie were celebrating a 24th birthday at the La Belle Equipe Café on rue de Charonne when terrorists opened fire. One woman lost a leg; another, riddled with bullets, fights for her life nearly two weeks later.

“I am deeply saddened - appalled - by the Paris attacks. Beirut. 9/11, yet we cannot live in fear,” wide-eyed and impassioned, Cecile conveys her point in a distinctly French accent.

To meet Cecile is to sense her allegiance to two citizenships she “cherishes in her heart. French by blood. American by choice.”

“American writers, movie directors, jazz musicians, painters came to France to find liberty, freedom, expressiveness, creativity, daring,” says Cecile, her given name Americanized to Cecilia, who personifies joie de vivre. “I love to be provocative, to instigate. I welcome friends into my home, cook for them, tell stories, listen to others, and drink champagne. My notorious generosity is a gift to America from my French heritage.”

Friends of Cecile's credit her with making “the champagne party very popular” in greater western Sullivan County, where she settled with her partner, designed and built a home together. For the past 20 years, they've called Callicoon their “haven,” finding it funny that destiny brought Cecile back to “the land of Woodstock” and the home of her favorite bands of childhood.

Born in Orleans, France, Cecile embraced American culture at a young age. Music by Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Eagles, The Doors blasted from her teen bedroom in the south of France. Elvis Presley's “Blue Suede Shoes” was the first record single she purchased, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” her first foreign film. An English teacher took note that Cecile recited Shakespeare with an American accent.

She came to live in Boston then New York City to share life with her first love, a composer-boyfriend, at the age of 19. In the States, Cecile became a freelance floral designer, decorating at parties for Manhattan's elite. Her artistry, in part, inspired by her French grandmother who took Cecile and her sister as children “to the daffodil field with scissors and thread.”

Terrorism was “a common fact” growing up in France. Early memories are of the hijacking of Air France in 1976, the hostage crisis in the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and the 1986 bombing of the Tati store in Paris her sister had left moments before a bomb exploded, killing five and injuring 60.

Cecile has found herself improbably near the epicenter of multiple terrorist attacks. In January when news broke of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, she had just returned home from spending the holidays with her family in Paris. On September 11, 2001 when hijackers crashed the first commercial airliner into the World Trade Center North Tower, she was flying over the Atlantic from Paris to New York.

The pilot announced her plane could not land in the U.S. and would return to France. “Automatically, I thought the plane had been hijacked.” Rumors the Pentagon had been bombed circulated among passengers. Only upon deplaning at Charles de Gaulle Airport did Cecile realize the extent of “the extraordinary act of terrorism.” At her mother's apartment in Paris, Cecile watched gruesome images of the Twin Towers flame, then collapse. A month earlier she had taken her sister Helene, her husband and two children to visit Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower where Cecile had decorated for many weddings. She knew the whole staff was gone.

When Cecile heard that 126 churches in Paris would ring their bell in homage of all the American victims, she found strength to go outside and participate in the “amazing toll.”

“The whole city echoed one big sound, each ring dedicated to someone's lost life.”

“The outpouring of love from the French towards America, was truly beautiful,” she said, just as words of sorrow and comfort American friends expressed for Paris. “I'm deeply touched by the people who reached out.”

Cecile maintains that despite reports of the “sad, heavy” atmosphere of days that followed, her French family and friends are riding the Metro, going out, living life.

“The Paris attacks were committed by a few people who happen to be radical Muslim. It is crucial not to make these attacks religious,” says Cecile. France will defend freedom of speech, she predicts, and “condemn cowards who use religion to make a point.”

“France is a secular, very liberated country. We have freedom of press. Religion is personal. You learn about religions of all kinds in public schools that are non-religious. Everyone has the right to believe what they will.”