Kerry Kennedy Pays Tribute to Cousin Tatiana Schlossberg After Her Death at 35

Kerry Kennedy has shared a heartfelt tribute following the death of her cousin Tatiana Schlossberg, who died on December 30 at the age of 35. The news was confirmed by the JFK Library Foundation, which announced Schlossberg’s death on behalf of her family. In a statement shared online, relatives described her as deeply loved and said she would “always be in our hearts.”

“More Joyful, More Beautiful”

Kennedy, 66, reposted the announcement on her Instagram Stories, sharing a moving message in remembrance of her second cousin.

“Tatiana left our world more joyful, more beautiful, more full of loving kindness,” she wrote. “May we all learn from her extra life.”

Kennedy is the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and a niece of John F. Kennedy. Schlossberg was JFK’s granddaughter and the middle child of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg.

A Recent Diagnosis Shared Publicly

Schlossberg’s death followed a deeply personal revelation she shared just weeks earlier. In an essay published by The New Yorker in November, she disclosed that she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The journalist said the diagnosis came shortly after the birth of her second child, a daughter named Josephine, whom she welcomed in May 2024 at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me,” Schlossberg wrote. “I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick.”

A Life of Writing and Family

Schlossberg, a Yale University graduate, worked as a journalist and essayist, often exploring themes of climate change, identity and personal responsibility. She married physician George Moran in 2017 after the pair met at Yale. The couple also shared a son, Edwin, born in 2022. In her New Yorker essay, Schlossberg reflected on the weight of grief carried by the Kennedy family and her anguish at adding to that history.

“For my whole life, I have tried to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry,” she wrote. “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.”

A Legacy of Grace

Schlossberg’s passing adds to a long line of losses endured by the Kennedy family, whose history includes the assassinations of JFK in 1963 and RFK in 1968, as well as the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash in 1999. As tributes continue to pour in, Kennedy’s words captured the sentiment shared by many who knew Schlossberg — that her life, though brief, left a lasting mark defined by kindness, intellect and love.