"Glee" season 5 Lea Michele has been showing just how strong she can be following the death of her costar and boyfriend Cory Monteith. The gorgeous brunette headed to "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Thursday, December 12th and opened up about her progress since the tragic death of her beau.

According to Us Weekly, following the July 13th discovery of her boyfriend's dead body Lea Michele struggled to get through the hard time but had a lot of help making the transition a bit less painful.

She told the host, "It's certainly been a pretty rough year," adding, "But I've been surrounded by such great people, such great family."

The 27-year-old who lost her 31-year-old boyfriend following his overdose on heroin and alcohol did her best to grieve out of the spotlight and had help from her "Glee" costar Kate Hudson who offered to let her hide out at her home.

Michele explained, "She was so wonderful to basically give me her home to myself and my family."

She added, "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 which just has a lot of memories and stuff. So being some place else to just have a moment was really nice."

The "Cannonball" singer admitted, "It's just really hard," adding, "There's so many different emotions and to kind of have people watching every step of the way.

"But to have that time at [Hudson's] 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."

One month after Monteith's death many were surprised that the starlet returned back to working on the series that she starred in alongside her boyfriend.

She said, "[Glee co-creator] 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 . . . they're my family."

She went on to say, "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."

Michele explained, "There's this grief [that] 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 [it.]

"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."

Trying to move forward the actress will always remember her sweet moments with her boyfriend and recalled Monteith's famous December 2012 interview on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," where he confirmed he and Michele were dating.

She said, "It's one of my favorite memories," adding, "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.' I was so happy.

"He's such a private person, and I literally lived every day 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."

Check out the interview below.