Tatiana Schlossberg has revealed that she is battling terminal cancer.
The 35-year-old daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg — and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — shared the news in an essay for The New Yorker published on Saturday, Nov. 22.
She explained that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia shortly after giving birth to her second child in May 2024, when her doctor noticed that her white blood cell count looked abnormal.
“A few hours later, my doctor noticed that my blood count looked strange. A normal white-blood-cell count is around four to eleven thousand cells per microliter. Mine was a hundred and thirty-one thousand cells per microliter,” she wrote.
“It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukemia” and with “a rare mutation called Inversion 3.”
Writing about her treatment options, Schlossberg said she could not be cured through a typical course of treatment.
She explained that doctors first told her she would need several months of chemotherapy along with a bone-marrow transplant, and that this would be her only chance at a longer life.
“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. I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew,” Schlossberg said.
Schlossberg wrote that she was overwhelmed by the reality of her diagnosis, especially with a toddler she adored and a newborn who needed constant care. She and her husband, George Moran — whom she married in 2017 — are parents to a 3-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter.
After giving birth to her daughter, she spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital before being moved to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant. She continued chemotherapy at home, and in January she entered a clinical trial for CAR-T-cell therapy, an immunotherapy used for certain blood cancers. Eventually, her doctor told her she likely had only a year to live.
In her essay, Schlossberg also highlighted the unwavering support of her husband, expressing deep gratitude for the way he stood by her through every stage of her illness. “George did everything for me that he possibly could. He talked to all the doctors and insurance people that I didn’t want to talk to; he slept on the floor of the hospital,” she wrote.
Schlossberg explained, “For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry.”
“Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” She added about her family, “Mostly, I try to live and be with them now. But being in the present is harder than it sounds, so I let the memories come and go.”
Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg is an American journalist and author born in 1990. She is the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, and the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. A Yale graduate with a master’s degree from Oxford, she has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other major outlets, often focusing on climate change and environmental issues.
Schlossberg is also the author of the 2019 book Inconspicuous Consumption, which explores how everyday habits impact the environment. She married George Moran in 2017, and they share two children.
