All the Scary Little Gods by Natalie Hoffman (book review)

The idyllic silhouette of a girl on a swing contrasts sharply with the purple-and-orange cover of Natalie Hoffman’s memoir All the Scary Little Gods. Subtitled “one girl’s quest to find truth and love in a maze of religious abuse,” this memoir traces Natalie’s life and spiritual journey from childhood to adulthood, with many ups and downs along the way. Natalie’s writing is engaging and honest from the very first pages, and she demonstrates through her writing the very healing techniques that have gotten her to where she is today.

I bought this book for my own library; all opinions expressed are my own. This post contains affiliate links; as an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

All the Scary Little Gods overview

Natalie divides her story into four parts, and tackles each part of her story in a different way.

Part 1 tells about her childhood from the perspective of “little Natalie.” Natalie explains that each of us needs an empathetic witness, someone with whom we can connect and share our experiences. When we lack that witness in our lives, we experience trauma. She says, “I’ve invited my younger self to tell Part One of my story from her perspective. In asking little Natalie to do this, I’m giving her space to share her experience, and I am offering to be her adult empathetic witness. While her life seemed to be wholesome and full of love to the average outsider, she was missing an empathetic witness for many of her childhood experiences. Her body held that trauma inside, influencing her thinking and impacting her relationships in profound and confusing ways.”

These first chapters are short, like little memory snapshots of various moments of Natalie’s life. Being a cry baby. Saying the Jesus prayer. Being bullied at school. Wanting to please God. Dating. Going to summer camp. Working as a nanny. Getting married and getting pregnant. After each chapter, big Natalie gives a gentle, caring response to the memory that little Natalie shared.

Part 2 continues Natalie’s story as a wife and mom. Natalie introduces the concept of Internal Family Systems, which “recognizes that we each have different parts inside of us, and those parts have their own beliefs or programming based on our life experiences.” She demonstrates how this works by letting her “parts” tell the story: Rude, Freaked, Melancholy, Wonder, Spiritualizer, and Rosie. As Natalie continues to recount her memories, each part now shares her reaction to the memory.

Natalie worries about Y2K, returns to Bill Gothard’s teachings, continues to have babies and to homeschool her kids and to struggle in her relationship with her husband, and tries so hard to be a good Christian. And then, at age 44 and pregnant with her ninth baby, Natalie hits a crisis point in her life.

Part 3 is the story of the end—and the beginning. Natalie shares her journey into seeing the abuse she’s lived with, both from her husband and from her church when she reaches out for help. She finds other resources and begins to take steps towards healing and wholeness. She talks about the stress of trying to be a perfect homeschooling mom (with special needs kids) and entrepreneur and more, and the impact the stress has upon her. At the end of these chapters, has realizes her only option is to get a divorce.

Part 4 continues Natalie’s story of healing and finding her own voice and her own faith while also helping other women. She talks about boundaries she sets with her husband and with her kids, steps she takes towards her own healing, how covid impacts her, how she meets her new husband, and how she founds Flying Free. Her story is one of growth and grace, of continually learning and helping others, and through it all, finding healing.

My thoughts on All the Scary Little Gods

Natalie’s podcast and online community were a big support to me early in my days as a single Christian mom. As Natalie says, it helps to have empathetic witnesses, other women to whom I could turn in that confusing time of my life, and ask questions about what to do next and how to face each struggle. After listening to Natalie’s advice for years, it was very moving to read her entire story and to see the windy road that brought her to where she is today.

As I found with Tia’s memoir, so many parts of Natalie’s story resonated with me. While Natalie had a difficult relationship with her mother, I had a difficult relationship with my dad. Both our parents affected our relationships with our siblings, but unlike Natalie, I now have a restored relationship with my brothers. Like Tia and Natalie, I wanted to be a good Christian girl and to please God. And like Tia and Natalie, I also attended Bill Gothard’s seminars.

“Every year I go to the Bill Gothard seminar with my parents. It’s a week-long seminar held in the Twin Cities where an older, single man named Bill Gothard teaches families how to be the best families in the world. We get a big red book and a workbook, and we sit through hours and hours of lectures. I love it because Mr. Gothard tells interesting stories with chalk. I love it because the lessons he teaches have easy-to-understand steps, and if you do them, you’ll please God and make everyone happy with you. I wish I would have known these steps when I was younger. Maybe my family would like me better.”

As she begins finding healing, Natalie says, “When I think of my childhood as well as my marriage, I was not hear, seen, or understood, and those years made up the bulk of my existence. All of that felt normal to me. It wasn’t.” That also resonated with me. In reading the memories little Natalie shared, I felt my own little Bonnie wanting to share her stories, wanting to be seen and heard just as little Natalie wanted to be seen and heard. Natalie shares a study she did in which she wrote letters to her younger self, and “was able to enter into curiosity and compassion for this person who lived in my body in all her stages of development. I was able to connect with her and begin to feel a powerful love for her. I began to see my sacred responsibility to have her back and never let her down if I could help it, and I had the power to do so.”

Natalie’s story also gave me hope. While she’s honest with all the ups and downs of her story, all the hard work she’s put into reprogramming and deconstructing and healing, she does escape the abuse and find a new life. She now helps other Christian women facing divorce and struggling to make sense of their own childhood memories and stories. Over the past four years, I’ve wrestled with why my marriage fell apart but also with my childhood trauma that impacted my failed marriage. Healing often feels like a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process, as I look back at my own memories with fresh information and confront untrue beliefs that I held as a teen and young adult.

Natalie’s story offers empathy and hope to women who are seeking escape and healing from emotional and spiritual abuse. Her story offers a warning to church leaders and Christians whose teachings may be causing fear, legalism, and abuse within their communities, rather than faith, hope and love.

More about Natalie Hoffman

Natalie Hoffman is a wife, mother of 9 children, grandmother, author of two books, podcaster, and educator. On her website, she says, “My mission is to empower women to discover and use their God-given voices, gifts, and freedom to make healthy choices for their spiritual, emotional, and physical well being. I believe this is how we change the world. One beautiful butterfly at a time.” She can also be found on Facebook and Instagram.