I need a kick in the butt re. coming out to my mother

I had to come to terms with myself fully first.
It seems you are there.

I just told myself I need to do this. My mom will support me. Even if not, I STILL need this.
So I was watching something with her and during a break, I just said "mom, I think I'm y, "

There was some surprise. But she was good about it. Scared the life out of me. It helped that I was sitting in a chained chair/sofa. As you can kinda feel like you sink into it. It's defensive, but helps.

I say plan to do it while you are both doing something together and mo one else is there. Then just spit it out as short and blatant as possible. From what you write she will be OK with it.
Yeah?

 

Please keep posting about your process with this. I want to come out to my parents, but I don't have a plan. I think your process in thinking about it could be helpful to me.

The lines I have considered dropping out of no where are, "Dad, you know I'm gay, right?" Or "Dad, you know I'm not straight, right? "

 

whenever I am trying to decide something like this I try to put myself in the other person's position. How would I want to be told?...For me, I would prefer it be in a letter. A sibling came out to me in a letter and it was better I think. It avoided the awkward "radio silence" that may be very uncomfortable while the other is trying to decide to be real thrilled, thrilled, scared, upset or confused. Over the phone would/could make these gaps in air time worse yet.

The other advantage of a letter is that you can write it now, make it just right, and then send it when you get the nerve. It doesn't have to be as big a production. If you email it, you can always finish with "I really would like to talk to you about this when you are comfortable".

 

Thought. Can you text through Skype? I haven't used it in ages but I wondered if you prepared what would be a letter and then texted it to her line by line while you're on your Skype call, you'd have the advantage of "being with her" when she read it, switching to saying it if you wanted to at any point and also modifying your message based on how she was reacting.

You could say it's possible you're bi but today you're confident you're interested in women and that won't change whether or not you become interested in a man later.

Have you seen the Dan Savage Coming Out to Parents video? I think it might inform how you go about this, somewhat.

Good luck. You sound good and ready.

 

I'm in the process of drafting a rather long coming out trans* letter that I plan on sending to non-immediate family, friends, etc. For my parental units, they'd be hurt by a letter but your mileage may vary.

Perhaps you could tie it into some discussion about recent news/legislation as an ice-breaker? Get her expressing her views honestly (but hopefully not homophobicly!) and then jump in with, "well mom, that ____ is really important to me because I'm queer/gay/bi/etc.... " yada yada yada, everyone lives happily ever after.

 

Ha! When I came out to my parents it was ughhh excruciating. They also aren't homophobic but are old fashioned and I felt really nervous. I called them at night and after an hour of chit chat, during which both of them were on the line (thank god, I wouldn't have been able to say it twice), my parents were ready to go to bed. And I was just like "wait, umm..." and my parents knew something was up. They patiently waited on the other end of the phone til I could muster up the words; it was only maybe a couple seconds but it felt like hours.

My advice would be to do something before telling her that will remind you love each other, even if you're not that close: look at old photo albums, or in my case, talk on the phone for a while. And even when the opportunity arises, it's ok if you don't seize it: sometimes it takes a few false starts before you're finally able to take that step and tell your mom.

You got this!!