‘Nashville’s’ Clare Bowen Shares Update on Brother’s Cancer Battle

“Timothy's doing really well. He's in remission,” Bowen reveals. 

Written by Lauren Laffer
‘Nashville’s’ Clare Bowen Shares Update on Brother’s Cancer Battle
Clare Bowen and her brother, Timothy; Photo via Instagram/by Ian Laidlaw

To say Clare Bowen has the spirit of a fighter is an understatement. At a young age, the Australia native was diagnosed with end stage nephroblastoma and given a grim outcome. Thankfully, Bowen beat her disease and made her way to America, where she eventually landed a role on the hit show, Nashville.

The fighting spirit within Bowen helped her once again when her brother Timothy was diagnosed with cancer in late 2015, around Christmastime. With a Stage IV Lymphoma diagnosis and a ‘two weeks to live’ scenario, Bowen and her family had to once again rally for one another in the hopes of a miraculous outcome.

Now, a year and a half later, Bowen has an exciting update in her brother’s journey.

“Timothy’s doing really well. He’s in remission,” she told Sounds Like Nashville and other media with a smile while backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. “Now, we both still have to go for check-ups and that never really ends, but he’s doing really, really well. Thank you. He opened for me on my tour this year in Australia and he’s gonna be back over here for mine and Brandon’s wedding really soon. So, he’s happy and healthy.”

“I’m so proud of him,” she continued. “He’s doing, not just healthily, he’s doing spectacularly as a person and it’s taught him so much just about life and love and survival, I guess. And he has just become an ambassador for the Cancer Council, in New South Wales, like I was before I got here.”

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Bowen has never been shy talking about her battle with cancer. She first shared the news when she got a dramatic haircut, chopping off her long locks for a pixie cut in 2015.

“I was really inspired when I heard a story about a little girl who said she couldn’t be a princess because she didn’t have long hair, and I wanted her, and others like her to know that’s not what makes a princess, or a warrior, or a superhero. It’s not what makes you beautiful either. It’s your insides that count… even if you happen to be missing half of them,” she wrote on Facebook. “Every scar tells a story, every baldhead, every dark circle, every prosthetic limb, and every reflection in a mirror that you might not recognize anymore. Look deeper than skin, hair, nails, and lips. You are who you are in your bones. That is where you have the potential to shine the brightest from. It is where your true beautiful self lives.”

Clare Bowen recently wrapped another leg of the Nashville Tour, which crisscrossed the United States and Europe. She’ll have a brief hiatus as season five of Nashville recently finished airing before season six resumes in early 2018.