i have a friend who's mom & dad got divorced & his mom came out to him that she was a lesbian. he totally supports her & loves her & sticks up for her all the time & it was no big thing to him at all. i honestly don't know how she told him, but it's a happy-ending kind of story. he's very supportive of her. good luck to you!

Hi there. My mom is a lesbian and came out to me (I'm the oldest) first. I think I was eleven or twelve. My asshat of a father sounds alot like your kid's dad--when my parents divorced he "found the Lord" and started going to a Baptist church that oddly enough talked ALOT about homos going to hell. Although maybe that was just on the days he would drag us to church. But I digress.
I think its wonderful that you want to come out to your kids. This is a big part of who you are and of course you want to share that with your children. You are very brave. For myself I think open & honest is always the best way when dealing with a difficult subject. I remember my mother saying that she had thought about this a great deal and had really known it inside for a long time. And I remember being really upset. Now I'm sure my situation then is much different from your children's. We lived in Missouri then, it was the early eighties and my mom was a high school teacher. She was terrified that someone would find out she was gay and she would be fired and/or her kids would be taken away. My father and his new wife were, newly and falsely it seemed/seems to me, extremely religious and judgemental. While they didn't know "for sure" that she was gay, they questioned and accused me often looking for "proof". When people did begin to find out we were shunned by many close friends and neighbors. It was a very, very tough time for me. Therapy, for everyone, would've been a brilliant idea.
You don't say what your relationship is with their father. Are you afraid he will speak ill of you after you've told your kids? Are there any LGBT people in your kids lives? For me my mother's friends were SO helpful in trying to make sense of everything. Are you afraid that your kids will react negatively? I don't mean to scare you by telling you how hard it was. Truly. It has made me who I am. That early experience with intolerance and bigotry shaped my life, in so many ways. As hard as it was, I'm thankful for it.
I wish you the best of luck in this tough decision.

That's a hard one... and as you posted this a while ago, I'd love to hear the update!

I've always been out to my daughter, who lives with me. I'm both Bi and Poly, and I have introduced her to people I'm dating and fielded questions when she had them. My son is a5 years younger (9 now) and lives with his Dad, and I only get to see him every month or so. He knows about the poly part - after his Dad explained to him that I was divorcing my subsequent husband "because your mom likes to sleep with alot of people", I felt it necessary to give him better phrasing and a deeper understanding of it. As far as coming out Bi to him, I'm not really sure... I think I mention running into ex-girlfriends periodically, and I've talked with him about how it doesn't matter whether you love men or women (or trans, for that matter), but that you Love. So... until he asks more detailed questions, I don't feel I need to go into it.

That's been my general rule... I try not to offer TMI to the kids (there's only so much they really want to know about their mom's sex life)... and when they DO ask questions, I give them the real answers.