As the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy, Tatianna Schlossberg has always been familiar with public attention.

Back in 2013, she leveraged her prominent status to support blood cancer research by participating in a three-mile charity swim across the Hudson River in her home city of New York.

Little did she know at the time, that her efforts would take on a deeply personal meaning just over a decade later.

In a heartfelt and poignant essay for The New Yorker, published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather’s assassination, Schlossberg, now 35, revealed her own battle with blood cancer, sharing that she has been given just a year to live.

Her diagnosis—acute myeloid leukemia caused by a rare genetic mutation called Inversion 3—was delivered shortly after the arrival of her second child in May 2024.

She vividly recounted how the joy of welcoming her daughter was swiftly overshadowed by the devastating news of her illness.

What followed was a grueling cycle of chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, and participation in clinical trials, including CAR-T-cell therapy.

The endless rounds of hospital visits is a far cry from the life she was leading just over a year ago as a prominent member of the Kennedy clan.

Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, revealed she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer

She graduated from Yale University, where she met her husband, George Moran, now a physician at Columbia University 

Tatiana is Caroline Kennedy’s daughter (pictured here together). Caroline 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 is the daughter of former US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter and designer Edwin Schlossberg.

But beyond her famous lineage, Schlossberg, born in New York City, has carved out a path as an accomplished American journalist and author focused on climate change and environmental issues. 

In 2019, she published the critically acclaimed book, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have. 

Her last article in The Times was published in 2023 and titled ‘The Importance of Protecting Ocean Life’.

The environmental reporter revealed in her op-ed that, before she got sick, she had been planning to write a book about the oceans and has focused much of her journalistic work on the importance of protecting oceans. 

Before covering climate change and the environment for the science section of the Times, she wrote the publication’s morning column, New York Today, and reported on New York City in the metro section. 

Her work has also been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Bloomberg, and Yale Environment 360. 

She continues her mission to make climate issues accessible through freelance pieces and her newsletter, News from a Changing Planet. 

Pictured: Schlossberg’s mom, Caroline (right), with her late uncle, John Jr. and grandparents, former president and first lady John and Jackie Kennedy 

The 35-year-old, the sister of Kennedy political scion Jack Schlossberg (seen together), said she received the diagnosis after giving birth last year, when a doctor noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count

Schlossberg is a fierce advocate for the environment and wrote for the science section in the New York Times until 2023 

Schlossberg began her journalism career in 2012 in New Jersey for The Record in Bergen County. 

A year later, she was named the Rookie of the Year by the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists and the second-best first-year reporter by the New Jersey Press Association. 

‘We all know which group we can trust,’ she joked on her website.  

Schlossberg’s byline first appeared in The Yale Herald during her undergraduate tenure at the university.

 She also received her master’s degree in United States history from the University of Oxford. 

While attending Yale University, Schlossberg received the prestigious Charles A. Ryskamp Travel Grant Award. 

It was during these years where she met her husband, George Moran, now a physician at Columbia University.

The two were married in 2017 at the Kennedy compound on Martha’s Vineyard. Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, officiated their nuptials. 

Schlossberg married George Moran in 2017 in Martha’s Vineyard. The two met while studying at Yale University 

Schlossberg and Moran are parents to two children, a one-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son 

Moran and Schlossberg have two children, a one-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son.  

Schlossberg praised Moran for his support throughout her treatment, writing: ‘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 also revealed that she has a close relationship with her family, particularly her sisters who offered to donate their stem cells.

Her older sister, Rose, an artist and filmmaker, turned out to be a match, while her younger brother, Jack, who launched his Congressional campaign earlier this month, was only a half-match. 

Despite that, Schlossberg joked that her brother still asked every doctor if he could still donate. 

Jack broke his silence on his sister’s diagnosis on his Instagram story on Saturday, reposting the New Yorker article and writing, ‘Life is short—let it rip.’

Schlossberg’s familial praise fell short of her estranged cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services divided their family.

In her essay, Schlossberg revealed that her older sister, Rose (pictured), donated stem cells to her during treatment 

Schlossberg thanked her siblings for their support during her grueling treatment (Pictured: Rose and Tatiana in 2011) 

She wrote that RFK Jr. was ‘mostly an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family’.

Part of Schlossberg’s initial disbelief at her diagnosis was due to her love of exercise.

In her essay she recalled how she had swum a mile in the pool while nine months pregnant the day before she found out she was sick.

A fitness fanatic, Schlossberg said she regularly ran five to ten miles through Central Park in her native New York.

When not pounding the pavements, she enjoyed hitting the slopes and completed Birkebeiner, a fifty-kilometer cross-country race in Wisconsin.

Her essay closed on a poignant personal note: ‘I remind my son that I am a writer,’ she wrote, ‘so that he will know that I was not just a sick person.’