By Matt Kite
Tacoma Weekly
May 27, 2026

Not all love stories are inspired by romance. Some, like Bre Judge’s, begin with a car crash.

It was Valentine’s Day 2020, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Bre, a Tacoma teacher, was involved in a car accident. Someone ran a red light and plowed into her car, and Bre ended up in the hospital.

“I got a concussion,” she recalls. “It was pretty bad, but I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time. They sent me home. Gave me concussion protocols.”

The accident’s lingering effects included debilitating migraines and a case of vertigo that wouldn’t go away. Due to social distancing, Bre did her physical therapy over the phone rather than in a clinic. As a teacher, she had learned to push herself, but by the time she returned to the classroom, the symptoms from her car accident still hadn’t abated.

“I was running to the bathroom to throw up from vertigo,” she says, “having panic attacks.”

It hadn’t been that long since Bre, the mother of two children, had earned her master’s degree in education from the University of Washington Tacoma. Now everything she had worked so hard to achieve in her professional career no longer felt like the right fit.

“The switch came when my husband and I had a chat,” she recalls. “I said it was time to make a change. He supported me.”

Indeed, Jon Judge, a Tacoma native who telecommutes every day to Washington, DC, for his job as a software engineer with the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, started studying real estate and investment in his spare time to lay the groundwork for a career change. Soon Bre and Jon had bought a couple of investment homes, restored another home, and even oversaw ground-up construction designed to help alleviate Tacoma’s lack of affordable housing.

After a ten-year-long teaching career, Bre transitioned to a full-time career in real estate and real estate investment. The risk felt like a big one, she says, given how much she had invested in teaching, but it was one she felt compelled to make.

During the same period, and much to her surprise, Bre noticed a new part of her personality emerging.

“I had time to realize I had this super creative side,” she says. “I had a passion for writing. I started by writing poetry. Then I learned that it was helping me to heal. I started going to therapy and found out I had a complex PTSD. I didn’t know that was a thing.”

Like many before her, Bre had assumed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was something only soldiers and first-responders experience. In fact, she learned that she could trace her symptoms not only to her car accident but to childhood trauma, which was expressing itself somatically.

In response, Bre started writing her memoir.

“I wanted to get my story out there to help other people,” she says, “but I couldn’t figure out an ending to my story. So I took a break and started focusing on my business.”

Bre started hosting events, including classes for first-time home buyers. The work felt similar to what she had done in the classroom. She also began hosting creative spaces for people to meet and collaborate.

Then one day it hit her.

“I was talking to my husband and trying to figure out what my next event was going to be,” she says, “and the idea of Love Letters to Tacoma popped into my head.”

Bre had noticed that writing wasn’t just helpful to her but to others as well. Something about being vulnerable and sharing their stories helped people process their trauma.

“It started as an art project,” Bre explains. “I thought I was going to create this paper quilt and maybe display it at a business. It was going to be a simple thing. My husband said, ‘Why don’t you take those letters and publish them?’”

Her love of Tacoma, Bre had come to realize, was playing an outsized role in her recovery and healing. And it wasn’t just her. Countless residents and visitors had found in Grit City the seeds of their own rebirth. As she solicited others’ stories, she began to see not merely individual threads but a tapestry connected by community.

During the Tacoma Literature Festival earlier this month, Bre and Jon ran a booth inviting participants to share their love letters to Tacoma. The invitation is ongoing through the end of 2026. Would-be contributors need only Google “Love Letters to Tacoma” and follow the link to the submission page.

“I give an option between six different prompts,” Bre says. “I ask people to write to Tacoma as if Tacoma is a person. I was hoping that everybody would feel comfortable writing a challenging story about how something in Tacoma helped them to grow. All stories are interesting. Maybe it’s not interesting to you because you’ve lived it, but it might help someone to heal, and you won’t even know it. A lot of people are writing about how Tacoma is helping them find community and overcome heartache and trauma.”

Some letters, Bre says, are quintessentially Tacoma and make use of humor and good storytelling, not to mention popular landmarks, businesses, and hangouts. But there are no set rules. Bre wrote her own letter, for example, in the form of a poem. It’s final stanza encapsulates her story: “You painted me with beautiful murals, monkeyshines, and historical stories. Much like the weathered sidewalks and buildings, you have taught me that broken things can be luminous too.”

Men, in particular, are encouraged to defy cultural stereotypes and open up about their experiences.

“I’m asking people to get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Bre says. “That’s something I’ve been working on. I’ve been doing lots of things that terrify me.”

Trauma, it turns out, can be an excellent teacher. It can connect us to the people and places we love the most.

“I’m actually thankful for all my symptoms and the car accident,” Bre says, “because it taught me so much.”