Hazard Ground

For 14 years Elana Duffy lived with chronic physical and mental pain, the result of injuries sustained from an IED blast and vehicle collision during one of her deployments to Iraq, two years into the war. During that time she had struggled with figuring out exactly what was wrong, and healing enough to continue on with a promising Army career, injury-free. Elana Duffy enlisted in the Army with an Ivy League Masters education and a desire to perform a job where she would see tangible results. But the IED blast and vehicle collision in 2005 would unfortunately inhibit her ability to continue to deploy, even after she had worked her way into selection to an elite Army unit. The invisible wounds of war had caught up with her, and she was medically retired in 2012. But through all of her struggles to figure out what was wrong, Elana Duffy never gave up the fight, both on and off the battlefield. She continued to perform her job at a high level in combat, and found a way to heal once she left the military, up to e