Who was Ronan Thompson? Maya Thompson, mom of Taylor Swift's “Ronan,” pays tribute to Tatiana Schlossberg

Maya Thompson, mother of Ronan Thompson, who inspired Taylor Swift's 2012 song Ronan, recently paid tribute to Tatiana Schlossberg. In an essay published in The New Yorker on Saturday, November 22, Schlossberg revealed that she has been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.

"Never in my life have I cried the way I cried reading this article. When writing tells the truth, it does more than inform. It reaches in and touches something wordless. I paid to read it, and I would pay again. It should be placed gently into the hands of anyone who still believes life arrives with certainty. Anyone who has not yet had their world changed by a single sentence from a doctor. Anyone who has forgotten how sacred a heartbeat really is," wrote Maya on her Instagram account.

According to Maya, her experience with Ronan allows her to "live inside" Tatiana's story.

"My son taught me what it means to love while time is running out. 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. Once you have lived that kind of truth, you no longer look at life the same way. You listen deeper. You hold tighter. You begin to love in a way that doesn’t wait for permission," she further wrote.

Born on May 12, 2007, to Maya and Woody, Ronan was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma in August 2010 when doctors found a mass above his eye and abdomen after a CT scan.

According to the Ronan Thompson Foundation's official website, he underwent "major surgery to remove the orbital tumor behind his eye", followed by "5 rounds of chemotherapy" at Phoenix Children's Hospital.

He then underwent a 10-hour abdominal surgery to remove a massive tumor in 2011 and continued his treatment with radiation and "high-dose chemotherapy" in New York City. Later that year, his health began to decline as his disease no longer responded to treatment.

Surrounded by his mother, father and siblings, Ronan sadly passed away on May 9, 2011, just three days away from his fourth birthday.

His parents launched The Ronan Foundation the same year, "dedicated to funding clinical trials to create more effective treatments and ultimately to find a cure for childhood cancer."

"I don’t want to end this story. I want it to go on forever. I want Ronan to never stop inspiring you all just because he is gone. I want his name and our love story to live on forever," wrote Maya on the website.

The next year, Maya was contacted by singer Taylor Swift, who told her that she had written a song for Ronan based on Maya's blog, crediting her as co-writer.

Swift performed the song on Stand Up 2 Cancer, and all profits from the single went to cancer charities.

Happy 15th Birthday Ronan Thompson.

Taylor Swift wrote “Ronan” as charity single and all proceeds from sales of the single go to help fight cancer.

The song peaked at #16 on Billboard HOT 100 and certified GOLD in the US. pic.twitter.com/JN8VWIUsat

— Taylor Swift News (@blessedswifty) May 12, 2022

"Reading her words brought me back to the hospital nights": Maya Thompson on Tatiana Schlossberg's diagnosis with myeloid leukaemia

Furthermore, in the aforementioned Instagram post, Maya Thompson said that Tatiana Schlossberg's New Yorker essay about her leukaemia diagnosis brought her back to the "hospital nights."

"Reading her words brought me back to the hospital nights. 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," wrote Maya.

Maya further wrote that the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg "is not imagining this pain" but "living inside it". She further added:

"She is trying to memorize the faces of the people she loves. 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. She writes with clarity and tenderness, like someone who loves this world too much to ever be ready to leave it."

She continued:

"This is what illness really is. Not statistics. Not charts. It is someone counting ordinary moments as though they are diamonds. 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."

In the essay, Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, revealed that she was diagnosed with the disease after giving birth to her second baby in May 2024. She has been married to George Moran since 2017. The couple shares a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter.