In 1992, Annette Herfkens was living a life many would envy. She was a thriving Wall Street trader, successful in her career, and deeply in love with the man she had shared thirteen years of her life with. His name was Willem van der Pas, though she called him “Pasje,” and together they had planned a much-needed romantic escape.

The plan was simple—reconnect after months of working in different countries, indulge in sun and serenity, and begin again where their love had left off. They flew to Vietnam, starting in Ho Chi Minh City before taking a small domestic flight toward the resort town of Nha Trang. It was supposed to be the beginning of something new. Instead, it became the end of everything Annette thought she knew.

As a lifelong claustrophobe, Annette felt uneasy as soon as she boarded the small, aging Soviet-built Yakovlev Yak-40 jet. Pasje tried to soothe her by saying it would be a quick twenty-minute flight. But after forty minutes, unease turned into dread. The plane jolted, dipped sharply, and then the world went black.

When Annette woke, the jungle roared around her. Bodies were scattered in the wreckage. A stranger’s corpse lay draped over her. Pasje, still strapped to his seat, was smiling but lifeless. The love of her life was gone. She herself was broken—her hip shattered, a leg broken, a collapsed lung making every breath an act of war, her jaw split with bone protruding. Yet instinct carried her. Somehow, she crawled from the wreckage. Somehow, she kept moving.

In those first hours, she wasn’t alone. Other survivors moaned in the darkness. A businessman gave her a shirt when her clothes tore. But as hours bled into days, one by one, their voices faded into silence. Soon, Annette was surrounded only by the dead.

Survival became routine. She used yoga breathing to keep her damaged lung working—mindfulness before she even knew the word. She tore insulation from the plane’s wing to collect rainwater, sipping just a mouthful every two hours and congratulating herself after each swallow, using small rituals as lifelines. Her elbows grew raw and infected, wounds so deep they later required grafts. Yet she endured.

Back home, her obituary was already printed. Colleagues mourned her. Friends wept. Her boss sent a condolence letter. Only one man refused to believe she was gone—her colleague and friend Jaime Lupa, who promised her father he would bring her home alive. Seven days passed. Her body weakened. She felt herself slipping away. But on the eighth day, a miracle appeared in the jungle: rescuers. They came only with body bags, certain they’d find no one left. Instead, they found Annette.

She was carried down the mountain on a makeshift stretcher and flown home. In December, she attended Willem’s funeral in a wheelchair. By New Year’s, she was walking again. By February, she was back at work in banking, her body patched together, but her heart still raw.

Years later, life took turns she could not have foreseen. She married Jaime, the man who had vowed to bring her back. Together, they had two children, Joosje and Max. Though their marriage ended in divorce, her life carried forward. Her survival mantra followed her everywhere: if you accept what isn’t there, you see what is. She accepted that she would never walk with her fiancé on that beach, and in turn she saw the jungle—the same jungle that nearly killed her—as something beautiful.

Her story became her book, Turbulence: A True Story of Survival, and her life became a living testament to resilience. She spoke publicly, explaining that instinct, not luck, saved her. She reflected on how being the youngest child, often left to her own devices, had given her the survival skills she needed. She even suggested that undiagnosed ADHD had made her inventive enough to endure.

When her son Max was diagnosed with autism, Annette drew from the same strength. She mourned what wasn’t there but cherished what was, joining inclusive communities and preparing her son for the world as best she could.

Even now, she marks the crash each year by treating herself to something special, remembering the days when survival was counted sip by sip of rainwater. Her trauma never fully faded—she avoids sitting behind passengers on planes, Vietnamese food can trigger memories, and the jungle remains an echo of both horror and sanctuary.

Hollywood once wanted her story but tried to shift it into something it wasn’t—making it about her instead of what she truly believed saved her. She insists the reason she survived was simple: she got over herself. She let instinct take control, set ego aside, and surrendered to what was real.

For Annette, survival isn’t a single act. It’s a lifelong practice. A lesson in loss, in resilience, in finding light through the leaves of the darkest jungle.