Tatiana Schlossberg Dies at 35 After Rare Cancer Battle
The environmental journalist and Kennedy family member revealed her diagnosis weeks before her death in a final, deeply personal essay.
New York City, December 30 EST: Tatiana Schlossberg did not live long enough to see the kind of world she spent years trying to explain and protect. The environmental journalist, known for her careful, unsensational reporting on climate and conservation, died December 30, 2025, at 35, after battling a rare and aggressive blood cancer. Her death was announced by the JFK Library Foundation, speaking on behalf of the family.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning,” the family said in a brief statement. “She will always be in our hearts.”
There was nothing performative about the message. It read like something written between breaths.
The Decision To Tell Her Story
In November 2025, just weeks before her death, Schlossberg chose to speak publicly about what she was facing. She published a first person essay in The New Yorker titled “A Battle with My Blood,” revealing that she had been diagnosed with a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia, according to reporting by The New York Times and ABC News.
The diagnosis followed the birth of her second child in May 2024. What initially seemed like lingering postpartum complications quickly turned into something far more serious. Doctors later told her she had less than a year to live, as reported by The Washington Post.
The essay was direct. Unadorned. She wrote about hospital rooms, chemotherapy schedules, and the surreal feeling of becoming gravely ill while caring for very young children. There was fear in the writing, but no panic. More than anything, there was clarity.
She chose to publish the essay on November 22, the 62nd anniversary of the assassination of her grandfather, President John F. Kennedy. According to People magazine, the timing was deliberate. For her family, history has never stayed neatly in the past.
Making A Life Outside The Name
Being born a Kennedy has a way of defining people before they speak. Schlossberg spent much of her adult life quietly pushing against that. She earned a history degree from Yale University, then a master’s degree from Oxford University, and went on to build a career focused on climate change, environmental policy, and conservation, according to The New York Times.
She reported on ocean health, pollution, and the slow, grinding consequences of environmental neglect. Colleagues told the BBC she had a talent for making dense science readable without draining it of seriousness. She was careful with facts and wary of theatrics.
Her work did not chase outrage. It sat with complexity. Editors who worked with her described someone who revised patiently, asked precise questions, and rarely rushed a conclusion.
In her final essay, she wrote about wanting her children, especially her young son, to remember what she did with her time. “My son knows that I am a writer and that I write about our planet,” she wrote, as quoted by People. “Since I’ve been sick, I remind him a lot, so that he will know that I was not just a sick person.”
Illness In The Middle Of Everything
Part of what unsettled readers was how abruptly her life changed. Schlossberg was not at the end of a career or easing into a quieter chapter. She was working, raising children, planning.
According to ABC News, she wrote about how quickly the future collapsed into lab results and treatment plans. One week measured in deadlines and bedtime routines. The next in blood counts. The essay never asked for pity. It simply described what happened.
That honesty landed hard. Journalists quoted by The Washington Post said the piece felt unfinished in a way that mirrored life itself. No tidy arc. No lessons neatly wrapped at the end.
A Family That Knows Loss
The Kennedy family has spent generations grieving in public, and Schlossberg understood that burden well. In her essay, she wrote about the pain of adding another loss to her family’s story.
“For my whole life, I have tried to be good,” she wrote, according to ABC News. “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.”
Her mother, Caroline Kennedy, the former U.S. Ambassador to Australia, has not spoken publicly since the announcement. Her father, Edwin Schlossberg, is an author and designer. She is survived by her husband, George, and her siblings Jack, Rose, Josephine, and Rory, according to People magazine.
The family has requested privacy. No funeral details have been released.
What Endures
What remains is the writing. Schlossberg’s final essay continues to move through newsrooms, classrooms, and inboxes, often shared quietly, without commentary.
She did not try to turn her illness into a metaphor. She did not soften it, either. She wrote plainly, trusted readers to stay with her, and kept returning to the work she believed mattered.
In climate journalism, where urgency can slip into noise, her voice was steady and humane. That voice is still there, on the page, doing what it always did.
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Trained in war zones, raised in Newark, and seasoned in city hall, Jordan blends grit reporting with deep integrity. From floods to finance bills, they’re always first on scene and last to leave.
