If it’s been years since you last watched a show on ABC Family, you don’t know what you’ve been missing.  Gone are the days of light fluff shows, and frivolous plots.  Over the past several years they’ve been dealing with more and more issues in their story lines.  Their characters have faced challenges head on — in Melissa and Joey not only did Melissa’s nephew have a pot incident on a school trip, but he ended up having to be home schooled, a situation that lasted beyond the end of the episode.  Imagine that, a sitcom that embraced the concept of not only a serious issue in the life of a teen, but went another step further, and embraced the concept of consequences.

On The Fosters a lot of more adult issues are being presented, enough that the show deserves a full discussion unto itself.  Teens going through the juvenile detention system, and the consequences that introduces into their life, is just one of many story-arcs The Fosters has explored.

ABC Family has definitely grown up since the days when the Olsen Twins were tweens on the network, and it was attempting to find it’s footing.

Chasing Life is a drama about a twenty-something, April Carver,  just starting her adult career, just getting out into the world, about to open her wings and start flying, only to accidentally discover she has Cancer in the form of Leukemia.  Consider people can live for YEARS with Leukemia when diagnosed as adults, but it requires treatment, and can impact the quality of life — reducing energy levels being on of the most obvious symptoms.

Another character in the show, Leo, has a brain tumor, his prognosis, as one might imagine, is not being offered in terms of years, but months.

Chasing Life balances the urge to yank on the viewers heart strings as it shows the very real trials and tribulations of being diagnosed with a disease that will change how life is lived from now on, with lighter moments, with finding new love and realizing April has to figure out how to tell this new love she has Cancer.  Some of the most honest and entertaining conversations take place in the scenes in a Cancer support group.

Far from being a sad or depressing show, Chasing Life is about fighting to live, chasing dreams and the future and living life to it’s fullest.  About understanding that we are only here for a finite amount of time, and being diagnosed with something like Leukemia drives home that point in a way a twenty-four year old, or truly no young person, should ever have that point driven home.  The diagnosis is a wake up call of sorts, April wants to build for her future, but she is also at a phase in life where every minute counts.

I come out of each episode wanting to challenge myself to balance the two urges — wanting to both make each hour of my day count more, while making sure I am indeed building for my future and towards my future, and in that respect also making my time count.

Chasing Life inspires on a multitude of levels, in part because even as the viewer knows these characters are not real people, it is so easy to believe they are true representations of Cancer patients.  They so beautifully convey the frustrations, the struggles, the desires and hopes of those not only with Cancer, but with many both terminal, and simply life altering diseases that the show is easy to relate to on a fundamental level.

I tune in each week, knowing that while Chasing Life, on it’s surface, seems like it could be a somber and depressing show, I will come out uplifted, inspired, and ready to conquer the world, along with the characters I’ve just spent an hour cheering on.

Chasing Life is adapted from a successful Televisa Spanish-language Mexican television series.  Fans of the show may recognize Steven Weber (Uncle George) from Wings, Murder in the First, or one of his numerous other projects, or Mary Page Keller from NYPD Blue or any one of her 60+ acting credits.

Chasing Life airs TUESDAYS AT 9:00PM ET/PT ON ABC FAMILY, catch up with episodes online.