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Celebs Including Kris Humphries, Bruce Jenner's Ex-Wives React to 20/20 Interview

Read Linda Thompson's revealing essay

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Liz Raftery

About 17 million people tuned in to hear Bruce Jenner publicly come out as transgender on 20/20 Friday, and dozens of celebrities have offered words of support for the former Olympic champ - including Jenner's ex-wife, Linda Thompson.

Thompson, who is the mother of Brandon and Brody Jenner, penned a lengthy essay for The Huffington Posttitled "How Living With and Loving Bruce Jenner Changed My Life Forever," which was posted immediately after Jenner's 20/20 interview aired on Friday night.

"I am a woman" and more revealing quotes from Bruce Jenner's 20/20 interview

Thompson chronicles her relationship with Jenner, whom she describes as "too good to be true," but also "the most athletic, high-spirited, energetic, easy-going, manly man imaginable." In the mid-1980s, she says, Jenner approached her one day and told her he identified as a woman.

She writes: "'What do you mean you identify as a woman?' I asked. 'What does that mean?' He replied that it meant that for as long as he could remember, he had looked in the mirror and seen a masculine image staring back at him where there should have been a feminine reflection. Bruce lamented, 'I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside.'"

Jenner wanted to travel abroad to transition and re-enter his children's lives as "Aunt Heather," Thompson writes.

Thompson says she would have "taken his confidences to [her] grave" if Jenner had not come out publicly, but now that he has, she fully supports her ex-husband.

"He can finally realize his need to be who he authentically is, who he was born to be," Thompson writes. "That takes tremendous courage. For that I commend him."

Other celebrities have also shown their support for Jenner publicly, including his children. But not all were on board. Kim Kardashian's ex-husband, Kris Humphries, had this to say (but later apologized):

Check out some of the more positive reactions below, and read Thompson's full essay here.