Tatiana Schlossberg, a granddaughter of JFK, is dead at 35 after cancer diagnosis
Tatiana Schlossberg, the journalist and author who was a granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, has died after revealing she had been diagnosed with cancer, her family announced Tuesday.
She was 35 years old.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the family said in a message on social media.
Schlossberg wrote in the Nov. 22 New Yorker that she had 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 a doctor noticed her abnormally high white blood cell count and ordered additional tests, she wrote.
She then spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York before starting chemotherapy at home and later receiving a bone marrow transplant.
“During the last clinical trial, my doctor told me it could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote. “My first thought was that my children, whose faces live permanently inside 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, having worked for The New York Times and contributing to publications including The Atlantic and The Washington Post. His book, “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have,” was published in 2019.
For example, she completed a 30-mile, seven-hour cross-country ski race in Wisconsin.
Schlossberg wrote movingly about the psychological toll of dealing with 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 digging in the sand,” she said.
In her essay, she reflects on the disbelief she felt upon hearing the news, given her healthy and active lifestyle: the day before she gave birth, she had swum a mile in a pool.
But during his latest clinical trial, his doctor said it “could keep me alive for a year, maybe.”
Schlossberg also criticized her cousin, Health 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.
While confirmed to President Donald Trump’s cabinet, she was undergoing a clinical trial for CAR-T cell therapy.
“From my hospital bed, I watched as Bobby, despite logic and common sense, was confirmed to this position, even though he had never worked in medicine, public health, or government,” she wrote.
She added that, given Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines and public doubts about their safety, Schlossberg was concerned that now that she was severely immunocompromised and needed to resume her childhood vaccines, she would not be able to access them.
