Maya Thompson, the mother of the late boy who inspired the Taylor Swift song Ronan, hailed Tatiana Schlossberg for her candor in speaking about her health battle publicly this week.
Schlossberg, the 35-year-old granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, detailed her journey after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer – and given a year to live – in a piece published in The New Yorker titled ‘A Battle With My Blood’ on Saturday.
Maya – whose son died in 2011 after battling neuroblastoma – was listed as a co-writer Swift’s song Ronan, as Swift had been inspired to create art after reading her story.Â
Maya said not only was Schlossberg’s piece masterfully-written, it brought her back to essential life lessons she learned from her son’s tragic health battle, about not taking life for granted for anyone, at any age.
‘Never in my life have I cried the way I cried reading this article,’ Maya said. ‘When writing tells the truth, it does more than inform. It reaches in and touches something wordless.’
Maya said the article ‘should be placed gently into the hands of anyone who still believes life arrives with certainty.’
Tatiana Schlossberg was hailed for her candor in speaking about her health battle publicly this week by Maya Thompson, the mother of the late boy who inspired the Taylor Swift song Ronan. Pictured October 2023Â
Maya’s son died in 2011 after battling neuroblastoma
Maya cited examples of people including ‘anyone who has not yet had their world changed by a single sentence from a doctor’ and ‘anyone who has forgotten how sacred a heartbeat really is.’
She wrote, ‘But I do not just understand this piece. I live inside it because of Ronan.’
Maya said that a number of key life lessons she picked up from caring for her ailing son came back to her after reading Schlossberg’s piece.
‘My son taught me what it means to love while time is running out,’ Maya said. ‘He taught me that hope and fear can live in the same breath.
‘He showed me that memory is something you begin to protect the moment you realize you might outlive the moments you wish could stay.’
Maya said that ‘once you have lived that kind of truth, you no longer look at life the same way,’ as ‘You begin to love in a way that doesn’t wait for permission.’
Maya said that Schlossberg’s piece ‘brought [her] back to the hospital nights’ and the details that she remembered from her son’s valiant health battle.
She wrote: ‘The hushed voices. The thin blankets. The long shadows across the floor. The way courage sometimes looks like simply staying in the room when your heart wants to run.
‘I felt all of it again. The ache that never really leaves. The quiet kind of love that keeps you breathing even when everything hurts.’
Taylor Swift pictured in NYC on November 7Â
Maya said that a number of key life lessons she picked up from caring for her ailing son came back to her after reading Schlossberg’s pieceÂ
Maya said that Schlossberg’s pain is not imagined, as she took inventory of what she thinks she is doing amid critical time as she fights for her life.
‘She is trying to memorize the faces of the people she loves,’ Maya said of Schlossberg. ‘She writes about her son and how she watches him play, trying to hold every detail in her mind.
‘She writes about her husband sleeping on the hospital floor. She writes about life beginning and ending at once.’
Maya said that Schlossberg ‘writes with clarity and tenderness, like someone who loves this world too much to ever be ready to leave it.’
Maya said that ‘this is what illness really is,’ as opposed to statistics or charts.
‘It is someone counting ordinary moments as though they are diamonds,’ Maya said. ‘It is someone realizing they might become memories before they are ready. It is someone whispering the names of the people they love into the night and hoping they will be remembered.’
Maya also praised Schlossberg for confronting ‘her own family’s legacy’ and calling out her relative Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – the Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump – as ‘an embarrassment for spreading misinformation that harms the very people fighting to stay alive.’
Maya ended her emotional peace with a poignant message to Schlossberg.
‘Tatiana, if somehow these words find you,’ Maya said. ‘You are extraordinary. You are luminous. Your voice matters. Godspeed. Life is not fair.
‘But your honesty is a light, and tonight your light reached me.’
