Tatiana Schlossberg, a journalist and the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy, has shared that she is facing a terminal cancer diagnosis and has been told she likely has less than a year to live.
In a newly published essay, Schlossberg, 35, recounts how her health crisis began just after the birth of her second child, a daughter, in May 2024. She writes that about ten minutes after delivery, doctors noticed her white blood cell count “looked strange.” Soon after, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, including a rare genetic mutation known as Inversion 3. Schlossberg, who has been married to Dr. George Moran since 2017, describes the news as impossible to absorb in the moment, especially while caring for a newborn and her young son.
After undergoing multiple clinical trials and two transplants, she says her doctor ultimately told her he could keep her “alive for a year, maybe.”
A painful chapter for a storied family
Schlossberg is the second of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg’s three children, and she notes receiving treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. In her essay, she reflects on the weight of adding another loss to a family long marked by tragedy. She writes of the guilt she feels and her lifelong instinct to protect her mother from pain.
The timing of her announcement also echoes the family’s history. Her essay was published on Nov. 22, 2025 — exactly 62 years after President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Caroline Kennedy also lost her uncle, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed in 1968 during his presidential campaign. The family has endured other major losses as well, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who died in 1994 after Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999; and other relatives over the decades.
On social media, cousin Maria Shriver encouraged readers to seek out Schlossberg’s essay and described her as a gifted writer and devoted mother. Shriver urged people to let the story serve as a reminder to appreciate life in the present.
Holding close what matters
Schlossberg also addresses recent political tensions within the extended family, including her relatives’ concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination and confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. She writes that his actions — including cuts to mRNA vaccine research and reduced NIH funding — have affected grants and clinical trials nationwide. She adds that she worries women could face worsening access to certain medical care, citing her own postpartum treatment with misoprostol and the drug’s current regulatory scrutiny.
Still, the heart of her essay centers on home and the future she won’t be able to share. Schlossberg writes about her love for her husband and her grief at the thought of leaving him to raise their children without her. She says she is trying to live as fully as she can with her family now, even as that goal feels difficult. Much of her effort, she explains, goes into collecting everyday moments — storing them like keepsakes — in the hope that they will stay with her, in some form, after she is gone.
