JFK’s Granddaughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, Reveals Terminal Cancer Diagnosis (Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage) President John F. Kennedy (Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images)
Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy, revealed Saturday (November 22), that she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer at age 35.
Tatiana explained that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia containing a rare genetic mutation known as Inversion 3 shortly after the birth of her daughter in May 2024.
“My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me,” Tatiana wrote in an essay for The New Yorker. “My son might have a few memories, but he’ll probably start confusing them with pictures he sees or stories he hears.”
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Tatiana is the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, and the eldest surviving granddaughter of JFK.
She described the heartbreaking toll her diagnosis took on her motherhood journey, saying she “didn’t ever really get to take care of my daughter” due to the risk of infection.
“I was gone for almost half of her first year of life. I don’t know who, really, she thinks I am, and whether she will feel or remember, when I am gone, that I am her mother,” Tatiana recalled.
Receiving the diagnosis was a shock to the 35 year old, as she described herself as “one of the healthiest people” she knew.
“I did not—could not—believe that they were talking about me. I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick,” she said.
Tatiana reported having undergone a course of chemotherapy to reduce the number of blast cells in her bone marrow, after which she received a bone marrow transplant with the assistance of her sister.
She explained that after achieving remission and returning home, she had no functioning immune system and was required to receive all of her childhood vaccinations again.
Despite doctors best efforts, Tatiana relapsed and has been given a short time to live.
“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote.
Tatiana, a Yale graduate who also holds a master’s degree from Oxford, has worked as a journalist for The New York Times and published her first book in 2019.
She is married to her husband, George Moran, whom she shares two children – ages 3 and 18 months. Tatiana also praised her family for all of their support during this difficult time.
“My parents and my brother and sister, too, have been raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half. They have held my hand unflinchingly while I have suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness in order to protect me from it,” she wrote.
Tatiana’s mother’s cousin, Maria Shriver, shared the essay on Instagram, saying, “If you can only read one thing today, please make take the time for this extraordinary piece of writing by my cousin Caroline’s extraordinary daughter Tatiana. Tatiana is a beautiful writer, journalist, wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.”
She stated that her children are now her primary motivation, and she is making every effort to cherish the time and memories she currently has with them.
“But being in the present is harder than it sounds, so I let the memories come and go. So many of them are from my childhood that I feel as if I’m watching myself and my kids grow up at the same time,” Tatiana said. “Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I’ll remember this forever, I’ll remember this when I’m dead. Obviously, I won’t. But since I don’t know what death is like and there’s no one to tell me what comes after it, I’ll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember.”
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