Schlossberg is the second daughter of Edwin Schlossberg and Caroline Kennedy, who served as the US ambassador to Australia from 2022 to 2024. Kennedy announced in September last year, four months after Schlossberg received her diagnosis, that she would leave her post and return to the United States regardless of the election results.
“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,” Schlossberg wrote in her essay.
Caroline Kennedy served as the US ambassador to Australia until November 2024.Credit: James Brickwood
“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.”
Tragedy has followed the Kennedy family since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. His brother, Bobby, was shot while campaigning in 1968. JFK’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr, died in a plane crash in 1999 that also killed his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, has been receiving treatment including a bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy and blood transfusions, and has joined two clinical trials.
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“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote. “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me.”
She has been leaning on her sister, Rose, a filmmaker, and her TikTok influencer brother, Jack, to help raise her children. Jack, who has built a social media profile based on bizarre rants, announced last week that he is running for Congress.
Schlossberg said she and her family had been embarrassed by her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a vaccination sceptic, running for president. He was confirmed as secretary for the Department of Health as she was undergoing treatment.
The Trump administration stripped federal funding from Columbia University, where she received treatment at the medical centre, but has since agreed to restore it.
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