Lea Michele appears on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, and this is her first sit down television interview since the death of her boyfriend/Glee co-star Cory Monteith. Lea opened up about her loss and how she grieved after learning that Cory overdosed on heroin last July, and it sounds like she's doing a lot better now.

"It’s certainly been a pretty rough year, but I've been surrounded by such great people, such great family," Lea said. "Hi mom, hi dad. They're so sad that they can't be here. They just bought a house in LA."

When asked about turning to Kate Hudson for support (and hiding out at her house), Lea said, "All those rumors were so weird. And we were even calling each other being like this is so crazy. It's so unbelievable what people can make up. You know 90% of the stuff you read is completely fabricated most of it. And she was so wonderful to basically give me her home to myself and my family. It was so helpful to just basically have a safe place to process and just have a minute to just breathe before getting back to my house with just has a lot of memories and stuff so being some place else to just have a moment was really nice."

Lea added, "It's pretty intense. And then if you smile it's like she's so happy and you know if you look sad they're like she's terrible. It's just really hard there's so many different emotions and to kind of have people watching every step of the way. But to have that time at her home to just really be in private with this for a moment before getting back to work and before going home I'm just so thankful to her."

On returning to work just a few months after Cory's death, Lea said:
    "Ryan Murphy, who is so amazing, he came to Kate's house and he said what do you want to do, whatever you want to do we'll do. I said I have to go back to work. We have to this is, they're my family and what people also don't understand is that going to work is no harder than being at home and being in the house and opening up a closet and seeing a pair of shoes. There's this is grief goes with you everyday whatever you're doing. When there's great moments, hard moments so I'd rather, for me, be at work with the people who I love that are going through and it obviously has it's own triggers, but at the end of the day I feel so safe there. And like I said, they're my family."


On how she's coped:
    "I really feel like I'm still trying to figure out all of this. It's been only a few months, but my mom has experienced a lot of loss in her life and she told me at one point she said there is an empowerment that comes with grief at some point you find it. It's very hard but you will find it and I think at a certain point you can choose to sort of fall from this or you can choose to rise. And that’s what I'm just trying to do my best for him because I know that that's what he would have wanted and to just do my best and to you know, hopefully make something positive for where I go in the rest of my life."


On the time Cory appeared on Ellen's show and chatted with her about Lea:
    "It was it's one of my favorite memories I remember when he came home that night he kind of puffed out his chest and he was like I talked about you on "Ellen" today and I was so happy he's such a private person and I literally lived everyday of my life feeling like the luckiest girl in the whole world. I just thought he was the greatest man and so at that moment, that memory, it means so much to me."