Clare Bowen: "I still wish it was me sick instead."

Last year, Nashville star Clare Bowen, 31, shared the very personal reason she chopped off her long, wavy hair in favour of a pixie cut.

It was because she was diagnosed with end-stage nephrobastoma as a child, and wanted a little girl suffering similarly, who was worried that she couldn’t be a princess with short hair, to know that she can be anything she pleases.

Now the Bowen family is facing another challenge: Bowen’s “big little brother” Timothy James Bowen, also a musician, is suffering stage four lymphoma.

“He has a voice that blows out ceilings, writes like he’s lived forever, and plays guitar like a madman,” Bowen wrote. “He is more than my brother, he is my twin flame.”

Watch the brother and sister performing… Post continues after video.

Bowen describes how she and her fiance Brandon Robert Young “dropped everything this Christmas and went back to Australia for the beginning of Tim’s walk through fire.”

The Australian actress and singer had to return to Nashville to continue shooting the hit show, but her family is constantly in her thoughts.

“We can’t put our arms around our family right now. Which is excruciating. So hang onto each other for us, for Timothy, for our family,” she wrote.

Read Bowen’s full post, below.

Her brother also announced his illness to fans on Facebook.

“2015 also brought some of the most unexpected and devastating news I have ever received. On the 28th of December, I was diagnosed with a form of blood cancer — Primary Mediastinal B Cell lymphoma,” he wrote.

“While the news has hit harder than a sledgehammer, I am filled will hope. The incredible team of doctors looking after me are confident that this thing can be cured. They haven’t wasted a single second. I completed my first round of chemotherapy yesterday and for the first time in 6 months, I finally feel like I’m the one in control of my body again.”