How Jill Biden is fighting off slipping into depression AGAIN after fresh ‘strain’ of Joe’s cancer bombshell

The last time Jill Biden dealt with one of her loved ones receiving a cancer diagnosis, she spiraled into a depression, lost her faith in God and became rail thin as she coped with the stress.

Now, as former President Joe Biden, 82, deals with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, there are worries about how his wife of 47 years is handling the strain. 

Jill Biden, 73, has stayed silent about her husband’s news as the family review treatment options. 

Meanwhile, the couple’s daughter Ashley publicly posted a tribute to her dad on her Instagram story calling her father the ‘strongest fighter I know.’ 

The former president has even thanked people for their support on X.

He posted a photo of him, Jill and their cat Willow, writing: ‘Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.’

Some noted, however, that while he is smiling in the picture, taken in their Wilmington, Delaware, home, Jill looks sad, clutching Willow to her.

Amid the worry about Joe Biden’s health, conspiracy theories have swirled the internet charging that Jill knew for years Joe had cancer and spent much of her time in the White House covering up his health issues. 

Jill Biden has not publicly addressed Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis

There is no evidence of this. And Biden’s spokesperson denied any conspiracy.

‘President Biden’s last known PSA was in 2014. Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer,’ his office said in a statement.

Prostate cancer screening is done via a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, a blood test measuring the amount of proteins produced by the prostate gland. 

But the public discourse adds the pressure on Jill’s shoulders.

The Bidens have weathered many trials and tragedies in their marriage – including Joe’s previous health battles, failed presidential campaigns, and deaths in the family. 

One of their biggest challenges was when their son Beau died of glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, in 2015 at age 46.

It was a ‘dark time,’ as Jill Biden called it. In the aftermath, she revealed the pressure she felt to be strong for her husband and her family. She’s recalled how she believed, up until the end, that Beau would make it and lost her faith in God after he died.

Staff remember the toll it took on her. She was second lady at the time, teaching English at Northern Virginia Community College and trying to hold her family together.

She lost a lot of weight, unable to eat and going on long runs to deal with the stress.

But they also remember another part of her: her resilience.

That inner strength comes from her own family bonds. While she was being strong for the Bidens, she had her own stable of sisterhood for support. 

The oldest of five girls, Jill Jacobs Biden counts on her sisters to be there in good times and bad. The sisters have watched Jill act as first lady, joining her when she donated her inaugural outfit to the Smithsonian, but they’ve been by her side in the tough times.

In August 2024, the month after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Jill Biden holed up in the family beach house in Rehoboth with her sisters. 

‘Dr. Biden is incredibly resilient. As oldest of five sisters, she has an innate ability to provide support for her family during the most trying times. And they provide support for her as well,’ said a former Biden aide.

The former first lady also loves the beach. One of her favorite activities is reading a book on the beach on a sunny day. Or riding her bike in the sand. 

Jill Biden with Beau Biden, before his death, when he was in the National Guard

Jill Biden reads on the beach in Rehoboth, Del., where the Biden family has a vacation home

President Joe Biden stands with (from left) daughter Ashley Biden, daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen Biden, grandson Beau, son Hunter Biden and Jill Biden in Nantucket in November 2024

Beau Biden is likely on her mind. Joe Biden’s diagnosis came a few weeks before the 10th anniversary of Beau’s death.

Jill Biden, who helped raise Beau from a small boy, described feeling ‘blinded by the darkness’ when he died.

‘I feel like a piece of china that’s been glued back together again,’ she wrote in her memoir Where the Light Enters. ‘The cracks may be imperceptible — but they’re there.’

In October 2021, the then-first lady gave a moving speech about how her faith in God was shaken after Beau’s death.

‘In 2015, my faith was shaken,’ she said, choking up as she talked. ‘For over a year I watched my brave, strong, funny, bright young son fight brain cancer. Chemotherapy, operation after operation, weight loss. But still I never gave up hope. As a mother, you can’t.’

And she noted the pressure she felt to be strong for Joe, their other two children and their grandchildren.

‘I had to be strong for my children and for my husband. But most of all for my son, Beau. I had to be strong for him. Because in the middle of it all, he was being strong for us. So I kept going. Every day, I put one foot in front of the other, and despite what the doctors said, I believed my son would make it,’ she noted.

‘After Beau died, I felt betrayed, broken,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t even pray. I wondered if I would ever feel joy again.’

It was the not the first time cancer touched her life.

She lost both her parents to cancer. Bonny Jean Jacob died in 2008 and Donald Jacobs in 1999.

Her mother’s story is especially tragic.

Bonny Jean Jacobs had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and had extensive surgery that destroyed her bowels.

Only later the family found out that, due to a clerical error, Bonny Jean’s pathology had been mixed up with another woman’s and she’d never had cancer at all.

But the surgery left her so weak that when she later was diagnosed with lymphoma, the chemotherapy treatments weakened her further. She died in 2008. Jill Biden left the campaign trail – she was supporting Joe during his failed presidential bid – to be by her mother’s side when she died.

‘She left before I was done needing her,’ Biden said of her mother.

Years later her sister Jan also was diagnosed with lymphoma. She survived the disease.

And, in 1993, Jill Biden had four friends diagnosed with breast cancer in one year.

Three of them survived. Her good friend Winnie did not, but Biden said ‘Winnie inspired me to take up the cause of prevention and education.’

Jill Biden with husband Joe in 2015 after Beau’s death – she had gotten thin from the stress

Then-Vice President Joe Biden (center) and Jill Biden arrive with their family for Beau Biden’s funeral service

And she made cancer research and screenings one of her signature issues as first lady. 

Jill Biden’s first act as first lady was to visit a cancer center in Virginia where she participated on a panel about health disparities.

And, during her time in the White House, she would have a bought with cancer herself.

In January 2023, a lesion that doctors had found above her right eye during a routine screening was confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma — a highly treatable form of skin cancer.

Later, another lesion on the left side of her chest was also confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma.

As first lady, Jill Biden helped revive the Cancer Moonshot, making research and screenings a priority for the administraiton

Then-Senator Joe Biden, in 1987, campaigning with Jill, sons Beau and Hunter and daughter Ashley

However, after all the loss, those who know Jill Biden take heart in the fact she found her faith again.

It was a visit to Brookland Baptist Church in the summer of 2019 that brought it back.

At that service, Robin Jackson, the wife of the pastor, came up to her and asked to be her prayer partner. It led to a friendship between the two women, with reminders to pray and giving each other encouragement.

Jill Biden recounted the story when she visited the church again two years later. 

‘When she spoke, it was if God was saying to me, ‘OK, Jill, you’ve had enough time. It’s time to come home,’ the then-first lady recalled.

‘And in that moment, I felt for the first time that there was a path for my recovering my faith,’ she said.

‘In the depths of our brokenness, we can start to believe that healing ourselves will never be possible. And the truth is, we’re right. We can’t heal ourselves alone. But with God all things are possible.’

And she used her time as first lady to push for more cancer research and screenings along with initiatives and new ways to care for families. She was one of the forces behind the relaunch of the Cancer Moonshot, the Biden initiative to end cancer as we know it.

When the Bidens formally relaunched the Cancer Moonshot in February 2022, she talked about cancer’s affect on the family and offered some hope. 

‘For Joe and me, it has stolen our joy. It left us broken in our grief. But through that pain, we found purpose, strengthening our fortitude for this fight to end cancer as we know it,’ she said.

‘Yes, cancer has the power to rewrite our lives. But we have the power too — more than we even know. We can stop it in its tracks. We can comfort and discover and dream our way past its paralysis. We can come together and rewrite the story that cancer tells.’