Tatiana Schlossberg, journalist and writer, granddaughter of John Kennedy, died after revealing she was diagnosed with cancer, her family said Tuesday.
She was 35.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the family wrote in a social media post.
Schlossberg wrote in The New Yorker On November 22, she revealed that she has acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation called Inversion 3. She was diagnosed on May 25, 2024, when she gave birth to her second child, and the doctor noticed her white blood cell count was abnormally high and ordered additional tests, she wrote.
She then spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York before starting chemotherapy at home and then receiving a bone marrow transplant.
“During my last clinical trial, my doctor told me he might be able to keep me alive for a year,” she wrote. “My first thought was that my children, whose faces constantly live on the inside of my eyelids, would not remember me.”
She was the daughter of artist Edwin Schlossberg and diplomat Caroline Kennedy, the eldest child of John F. Kennedy.
Tatiana Schlossberg was an experienced and respected environmental journalist who worked for The New York Times and contributed to publications such as The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Her book, “Sneaky Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Never Knew” was published in 2019.
For example, she completed a seven-hour, 30-mile cross-country ski race in Wisconsin.
Schlossberg wrote movingly about the psychological toll of a terminal illness while raising a young family.
“Maybe my brain is replaying my life now because I have a terminal diagnosis and all these memories will be lost. Maybe it's because I don't have much time to create new ones, and part of me is sifting through the sand,” she said.
In her essay, she reflected on the disbelief she felt upon hearing the news, given her healthy and active lifestyle: the day before giving birth, she swam a mile in the pool.
But in a recent clinical trial, her doctor said he “maybe he can keep me alive for a year.”
Schlossberg also criticized her cousin, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who she said “was an embarrassment to me and the rest of my family” when he ran for president as an independent candidate in 2024.
When it was confirmed into President Donald Trump's cabinet, it was undergoing clinical trials for CAR T-cell therapy.
“I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, despite logic and common sense, was confirmed for this position despite never having worked in medicine, public health or government,” she wrote.
She added that given Kennedy's skepticism about vaccines and his public doubts about their safety, Schlossberg is concerned that now that she is severely immunocompromised and needs to retake childhood vaccines, she may not be able to access them.
