You're on The Bird Show.

It's The Birch Show on All the Hits, Q100, with Ellen DeGeneres comes on 5 o'clock on CBS 46. You know, hey, Ellen, it's Melissa, and I here in Atlanta, I'm an out lesbian on this radio station, and I want to say thank you for coming out on that show, because your show actually was what my family watched in order to learn how to accept me because about that time

I was coming out. So I do want to say thank you for that. But I'm also curious how much of an

effort did it take or was it a struggle to get the network to allow you to change the course of the

storyline? You mean once I came out or just making that decision? Well, I guess both.

Coming out was, yeah, it was kind of tough because they didn't know what was going to happen

with that.

And, you know, it was a huge decision, but I kept making everyone, I mean, because I knew

I was coming out and I thought if I'm coming out, the character should come out because

it's ridiculous. The character's kind of, you know, close to who I am, and it made sense because she never dated on the show, and it was just, it was never going to be about dating. I didn't really think it through. I didn't think, okay, where do we go after this? But I just thought, I'm the one taking the bigger chance here. You know, you can cancel me and have your company worth

a billion dollars and you can put somebody else on the air, but I may lose my career, although I didn't think I would. I thought it was not going to be a big deal, and I was wrong. But it was, you know, it was hard to say, listen, I can't just ignore this now. The character doesn't just come out and go back to her life. We've got to somehow, it's not a funny thing at all. For most people, it's a really tough thing, but

let's try to make it funny. Let's try to make it awkward and make this an interesting show that no one's seen before, the process of changing your world.

But I was really proud of that last year, and I think when people look back on it, they will realize that it was a good year. It just didn't do well. Hey, Ellen, this is Jen. And my question is kind of in how you handled that situation. In comparison to real life, you were saying, like, the show was very serious and it was a very big deal, but you try to deal with it with humor. Is that kind of the same way in your everyday life? Are you dealing with, you know, difficult situations by

making everybody laugh? Well, I think that that's, you know, my life is really good right now. So,

you know, if I have anything to complain about, I try to shake myself or slap myself and say,

you know, life is really, really good for me.

So I don't ever really feel sorry for myself or complain.

And I think it's really important to me.

I mean, this is what I've always done.

I'm a comedian.

And what I love about the show is that people watch the show and they feel good.

Every single person that comes up to me says that the show and they feel good. Every single person that

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