She was experiencing 1 g of acceleration, not zero g.
Nope. The popular genius has captured the truth very well with the expression “free fall”. Einstein promoted the idea to the fundamental Principle of Equivalence. Physically, there’s no difference between floating in intergalactic space, and dropping off a cliff. In each case there are no forces acting on you, and you are in “free fall”.
BTW, I would suppose that the reported feeling of “shocking acceleration” might be due to the visual sensation of the onrushing ground, perhaps, or a passing structure, depending on the circumstance. This is physically no different than the experience of diving into water from a height, of course, but the subjective experience depends on more than the physics of free fall.