H. Nattanya Andersen Interview Published on: 12, Mar 2026
Your life truly reads like an adventure log. What first drew you to the skies—and to crossing oceans—at such a young age?
I met my first Stewardess at age 5 and instantaneously knew that that was what I wanted to be when I grew up. Going to sea at age 17 as a Merchant Marine Stewardess with the permission of my mother in a way possibly was the first step towards that desire.
You began your career as a stewardess on a Danish freighter. How did that unconventional start shape the person and writer you later became?As I was so very very young, all aboard, from Captain to ship’s boy, seemed to treat me as their younger sister.
Wanting to educate me, I learned to paint o/b ship, was taken along on sightseeing adventures, sleazy harbour bars and whorehouses, all to educate and prepare me for life.
Realizing your dream with a major North American airline must have felt like a pinnacle moment. What did flying represent to you at that time?Freedom from a rather bad marriage, with my mother in-law encouraging me to run, if I had the guts.
The engine explosion you experienced moments after takeoff was life-altering. How did that single event change your understanding of safety, trust, and vulnerability?It was the final event after an extraordinary amount of previous near-misses. It took me almost 4 months to figure out whether I wanted to live or die, and signified the lead-in to searching for the spiritual aspects of life without knowing that that was what I was doing. Consideration of safety, trust, and vulnerability did not come into play at all, as I recall.
After being diagnosed with PTSD, you faced a decade-long struggle for both health and career. What were the hardest misconceptions you had to confront—both internally and externally?Around 24 so-called mental health professionals terrible ignorance, arrogance and brutality combined with my employer’s attitude, the Workers’ Compensation Boards terrorization, the Union playing ball with them all, assisted by 2 flight attendant snitches.
Broken Wings: A Flight Attendant’s Journey is deeply personal. What was the most difficult truth you had to put on the page?There was no difficult truth. Everything is right from the heart.
Writing a memoir often reopens wounds. Did revisiting those experiences help your healing, or did it complicate it?Neither-Nor. I began to write it in the middle of the 10 years the above entities tried to drive me into suicide or onto Vancouver’s famous skid road. I think it saved me from that fate.
Your investigative series The PTSD Fallacy takes a bold step beyond personal narrative. What compelled you to challenge the mental-health industry so directly?Meeting 26 or so US Military personnel o/b a cruise ship in 2026 for 45 minutes in the middle of the Atlantic on a journey from Tampa to Copenhagen with ONE stop. To see these men and one woman destroyed by the mental health profession so shook me, that I for the remaining 8 days of the journey contemplated how I would feel on my deathbed, if I did not share with the world what I had done by osmosis to heal myself from PTSD. The rest is history.
What did your research reveal that most surprised or unsettled you about how PTSD is diagnosed and treated?The ignorants of all professing to be experts in it. It borders on the criminal. Their success rate is reflected by the multitude of US and Canadian soldiers populating city streets, as pharmaceutical drugs drag them further into the PTSD misery destroying both body and mind.
Resilience is a core theme in your work. How do you personally define resilience after everything you’ve endured?Taking control over ones own thinking. Watching it like a hawk and changing it to ones liking. Perpetually kick the self into action.
Be aware that all that is ask of us when dwelling on this plane is to carry ourselves with honour, integrity and graciousness at any given moment… we get A for effort form those in the unseen assisting us, if asked... and to apply almost brutal discipline, determination, willpower and persitency to our undertakings. Ones we earnestly make that our leitmotif, our sole intention, we will see our lives change for the better.
How did losing—and then redefining—your career force you to rethink identity and self-worth?Never gave it a thought. Just knew in 2016, that I had to write, and now know it is my reason for being alive, otherwise I could not do it, because the revelations I make daily during research are so sinister and evil to easily depress, if unlearned in the art of “flowing above it.”
Living on Vancouver Island sounds like a quieter chapter. How has this environment influenced your writing and sense of peace?Little per se. Having travelled since the age of 5, meeting people all over the world for decades, it is no different here than anywhere else in regards to humanity.
However, I like the at times rough weather, being able to grow vegetables year round and my own potatoes, the soothing ocean facing me, or me facing it, rather, the peace and quiet of a hamlet.
Sailing now plays an important role in your life. Do you see parallels between sailing, flying, and storytelling?All the same, as merchant mariners also are a spiritual group of folk having seen what air and sea can throw at one, and thus both groups encountering many situations rattling the soul and fit for telling .
What do you hope readers take away from your work—especially those who feel unheard or dismissed within the mental-health system?Nothing. I have no power over my readers and hope for nothing.
It is me I am concerned about, knowing that if I do not fulfill my life’s main objective, to bring my discoveries to the world, I will have missed my duty and failed this live’s performance. I am unwilling to take that risk, therefore I will write until I drop dead.
Would you recommend AllAuthor to fellow authors, and if so, what services or tools on the platform have you found most useful in growing your business?Of course I would, finding all your tools and services helpful. However, it is my co-pilot Ms. Kera McHugh who is in charge of all business aspects. I am merely the writer.
