Tatiana Schlossberg, the journalist and author who was John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, has died after disclosing she was suffering from 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 social media post.
Schlossberg wrote in The New Yorker On November 22, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, which has a rare mutation called inversion 3. She was diagnosed on May 25, 2024, after she gave birth to her second child and a doctor noticed her abnormally high white blood cell count and ordered further tests, she wrote.
He spent five weeks in New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital before beginning chemotherapy at home and later receiving a bone marrow transplant.
“During the latest clinical trials, my doctor told me he could probably keep me alive for another year,” he wrote. “My first thought was that my children, whose faces reside 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, who had worked for The New York Times and contributed to publications such as The Atlantic and The Washington Post. His book, “Innocuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have” was published in 2019.
For one story, she completed a 30-mile, 7-hour cross-country ski race in Wisconsin.
Schlossberg wrote poignantly about the psychological impact of dealing with a terminal illness while raising a young family.
He said, “Maybe my mind is replaying my life now that I got the final diagnosis, and all these memories will be lost. Maybe it’s because I don’t have as much time to make new memories, and part of me is sifting through the sand.”
In her essay, she reflected on the disbelief she felt upon hearing the news given her healthy, active lifestyle – the day before giving birth, she swam a mile in a pool.
But in his latest medical test, his doctor said he could “probably keep me alive for another year.”
Schlossberg also criticized her cousin, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, whom she said would be “an embarrassment to me and the rest of my family” when he ran for president as an independent candidate in 2024.
She was undergoing clinical trials for CAR T-cell therapy when she was being confirmed for President Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointment.
He wrote, “I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby was selected for this position, based on logic and common sense, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or government.”
She further stated that, given Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines and public skepticism over their safety, Schlossberg was concerned that, now that her immune system was severely weakened and she needed to retake her childhood vaccines, she would not be able to access them.
