The Grief Wave: Sarah Josepha Hale, Abraham Lincoln, and the Birth of a Healing Holiday

💌 Dear friends of The Grief Wave,

When a country feels stretched thin by sorrow, sometimes it only takes one persistent voice to remind us that we can still imagine a gentler way forward.

Long before Thanksgiving became a national holiday, Sarah Josepha Hale looked at a fractured America and sensed the grief beneath its surface. In the 1840s, when the newly resurfaced diaries from Plymouth revealed a forgotten moment of shared harvest between Pilgrims and Wampanoags, she saw more than a quaint historical footnote. She saw a symbol — a brief flicker of connection in a history marked by violence, loss, and heartbreak.

At a time when tensions between North and South were tightening like an unspoken grief, Hale believed a national day of giving thanks might help steady a country that felt increasingly unmoored. She lobbied for years, writing, urging, insisting that a shared ritual could soften division and remind Americans of their common humanity.

Then the Civil War erupted, and her hope took on a new weight.

Amid the heartbreak of Fort Sumter, the early defeats, and the long lists of the newly dead, Hale’s call for a national Thanksgiving became something deeper: a plea for a grieving nation to pause, to remember what it still cherished, and to hold onto the fragile threads of unity. Her idea reached Abraham Lincoln at a moment when Americans were burying sons, sorting through shattered futures, and questioning whether the nation could survive at all.

Lincoln’s proclamations carried the unmistakable echo of Hale’s conviction. He acknowledged the country’s sorrow — “dark periods” carved into homes and hearts — yet urged people to see the emerging light: the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the preservation of democratic ideals, the promise that slavery would finally end. His messages held grief and hope together, honoring loss while insisting on the possibility of renewal.

Hale’s vision had become Lincoln’s language, and eventually, the nation’s ritual.

If your own heart feels heavy this week, her story offers a quiet truth: even in the hardest seasons, one person’s steadfast hope can help an entire community remember who it longs to be.

Thanksgiving was born not from ease, but from heartbreak — and from Hale’s belief that gratitude, practiced together, might help a wounded country begin to heal.

For more about this important history, see Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s recent story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVkWrmc524o

Explore care, connection, and community at caligrief.com.