Maria Shriver has expressed heartfelt admiration for her cousin Tatiana Schlossberg, who has recently shared her struggle with terminal cancer at the age of 35.
In a poignant essay titled “A Battle With My Blood,” published in The New Yorker, Schlossberg disclosed her diagnosis, which she received last year.
Maria Shriver, whose mother, Eunice Shriver, was the sister of Schlossberg’s grandfather, John F. Kennedy, took to social media to offer her support and admiration for her cousin’s courage and eloquence.
Shriver praised Schlossberg as a “beautiful” individual, noting how the essay provides a deep insight into the challenges she has faced over the past year.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Shriver urged her followers to read the piece, saying, “If you can only read one thing today, please 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. This piece is about what she has been going through for the last year and a half.”
She continued, “It’s an ode to all the doctors and nurses who toil on the frontlines of humanity. It’s so many things, but best to read it yourself, and be blown away by one woman’s life story. And let it be a reminder to be grateful for the life you are living today, right now, this very minute.” Shriver included a link to the full essay in her Instagram stories.
Maria Shriver has praised her cousin Tatiana Schlossberg as ‘extraordinary’ after the younger Kennedy heir announced her battle with terminal cancer
Schlossberg, 35, revealed she was diagnosed last year in a candid New Yorker essay entitled ‘A Battle With My Blood’; pictured 2022
Accompanying the post were screenshots from Schlossberg’s New Yorker article.
In a piece published on the 62nd anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Schlossberg said she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer, in May 2024.
The daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg revealed she had no symptoms and felt she was ‘one of the healthiest people I knew.’
Doctors only found the disease through routine blood tests after she gave birth to her second child.
In her piece, Schlossberg said the diagnosis came when a doctor noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count.
‘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,’ she recalled.
Schlossberg was eventually diagnosed with a ‘rare mutation called Inversion 3’ which ‘could not be cured by a standard course.’
Schlossberg said she was bewildered by the news, and said despite being nine-months pregnant she was routinely exercising and ‘didn’t feel sick.’
‘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,’ she wrote.
Shriver’s mother Eunice Shriver was siblings with Schlossberg’s grandfather John F. Kennedy (Shriver pictured with her late parents Eunice and Sargent Shriver in 2001)
The journalist urged her followers to read Tatiana’s New Yorker piece
Schlossberg said she spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital after giving birth, before she was transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant.
She then underwent grueling chemotherapy at home, and in January she joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy against certain blood cancers.
In a devastating blow following the news, Schlossberg said she was eventually told by doctors that she had just a year left to live.
Schlossberg lamented the impact that her diagnosis had on her storied family, which has famously suffered a series of tragedies and scandals over the years.
Schlossberg lamented the impact that her diagnosis had on her storied family, which has famously suffered a series of tragedies and scandals over the years.
Schlossberg, 35, revealed she was diagnosed last year in a candid New Yorker essay entitled ‘A Battle With My Blood’
The family’s tragedies include the assassination of her grandfather JFK in 1963, and then his younger brother RFK in 1968.
The next year, JFK’s younger brother Ted infamously drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, which killed passenger Mary Jo Kopechne – leading Kennedy to question at the time if ‘some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.’
Schlossberg wrote in her essay: ‘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.’
Schlossberg’s mother Caroline Kennedy served as the US Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2024, and previously served as Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama.
Tatiana seen with her mother Caroline Kennedy, who served as the US Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2024, and previously served as Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama
Schlossberg also praised her husband George Moran, a physician, for supporting her through her treatment
Schlossberg also praised her husband George Moran, a physician, for supporting her through her treatment.
‘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.
She continued: ‘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.
‘This has been a great gift, even though I feel their pain every day.’
The acute myeloid leukemia with Inversion 3 that Schlossberg was diagnosed with is a rare and aggressive form of cancer that is typically difficult to uncover.
It is considered a very high-risk form of cancer with poor prognosis, and has a five-year survival rate of just 15-20 percent.
Because of its genetic makeup, the diagnosis is often resistant to standard chemotherapy.
