Slay Your Dragons - Malcolm Stern

Reclaiming Your Name: Camilla Balshaw's Journey of Identity and Healing

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What happens when your name isn't truly yours? When your cultural heritage is erased? When doctors dismiss your pain? Camilla Balshaw's powerful story tackles these questions with remarkable vulnerability and wisdom.

For the first 24 years of her life, Camilla answered to "Mandy" – a name her Jamaican mother preferred over the Nigerian name her father had chosen. This dual identity became symbolic of a deeper fracture when her parents divorced and her father disappeared from her life for forty years, taking her connection to her Nigerian heritage with him.

The journey to reclaim her birth name became intertwined with reclaiming her complete identity. "I'm my mother and father's daughter," Camilla reflects, describing how she eventually integrated both cultural influences after decades of disconnection. When her father unexpectedly reached out after forty years, she made the conscious choice not just to reconnect, but to embrace her birth name and the Nigerian part of her identity that had been submerged.

Alongside this identity journey, Camilla navigated severe endometriosis that began at age ten. Her experiences highlight the dismissal many women face in healthcare settings – "Women haven't been listened to by the medical establishment for decades," she notes. Rather than surrender to bitterness, she found healing through yoga and meditation practices discovered during five transformative years living in Japan with her husband.

Camilla's memoir "Named: A Story of Reclaiming and Reclaiming Who You Are" weaves these threads together, exploring how names shape identity and belong to larger narratives about race, class, gender, and belonging. Her experience reminds us that reclaiming our authentic selves often means confronting painful histories while remaining open to unexpected healing. As one of her teachers wisely observed: "In life, when you need the most, you'll find the angels."

Join us for this inspiring conversation about identity, healing, and the courage to become fully yourself.

Book Link | Named: A Story of Names and Reclaiming Who We Are

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents


Malcolm Stern:

So welcome to my podcast, slay your Dragons with Compassion, which I'm doing in conjunction with my friends John and Sandra Wilson at Online Events, and we have a range of ordinary and extraordinary and I think everybody actually is extraordinary. Everyone has a story to tell and we've all been moulded by the experiences that have happened to us. So I'm very glad to welcome Camilla Balshaw today to our podcast. Hi, camilla.

Camilla Balshaw:

Thank you, hi, hi, malcolm.

Malcolm Stern:

And we don't know each other very well. Camilla came to me through Jenny Boyd, who was with the Beatles in India when they were seeing the Maharishi, and Camilla is a writer and a yoga teacher and of course, you met Jenny originally through giving her yoga classes.

Camilla Balshaw:

I did. Yes, yeah, I didn't want to become friends. Teach her yoga, after all.

Malcolm Stern:

That's great, and so we were talking a little bit about what's shaped you, and I think what often shapes us in our early days is our upbringing, and you were brought up in Luton and presumably a reasonably happy childhood until you were about six or seven and then your parents divorced, and what's interesting in there I mean interesting is horrible, because it's really about you know, these are the struggles we go through is that you didn't see your dad for another 40 years after your parents divorced.

Camilla Balshaw:

That's right. So yes, so I grew up in Luton, the epicentre of the world, and, yeah, I did have a happy childhood. So my mum is Jamaican, my dad's Nigerian, which was quite an unusual relationship in that time. Jamaicans very different to Nigerians in terms of culturally, in language background, so it was quite an unusual union. I don't actually know how they met. That's kind of shrouded in mystery. My dad came from a very wealthy Nigerian family and was sent over to the UK to study and my mom was from quite a rural working class background in Jamaica and she came over to the UK in 1959. And my dad came over earlier than that, obviously to study, and then they met. The circumstances of their meeting I really don't know. My mom doesn't really talk about it, but she said it's always interesting because she said my dad charmed her. He was very charming and dashing, so I guess he swept her off her feet and they subsequently had three children.

Camilla Balshaw:

I'm the youngest and I don't remember I mean my dad wasn't around. I mean he was a presence in the house but he wasn't around much. My dad, when he first came to the UK he had an allowance from his mum and I think that stopped after he decided that he was never coming back to Nigeria and he just was. I think his head was swayed by the bright lights of London and I don't think he quite. He wasn't prepared to be a father or a husband actually, and I think he enjoyed parties, whiskey, late nights, probably other women, and so he was a very shadowy presence. I just remember he used to smoke cigarettes, a particular brand, I think Carlton Long, and I always remember the smell of cigarettes and my dad had been in the room or he used to read the Times newspaper and I remember him as a very tall, elegant man but he just wasn't around much.

Camilla Balshaw:

He was a very shadowy in and out figure and I think it got to the point with their relationship when my mum just had enough and started divorce proceedings and he left and then initially we did have we he had a flat in London and we did occasionally see him in London and then they just sort of slowly pitted out and then he went back to Nigeria and that was it and I was about, yeah, the last time I saw him, maybe around seven, eight the last time I saw him, maybe around seven, eight the last time I saw him and I think at the time you're quite resilient as a child and I just sort of got on with life without a dad. But I always sort of felt did I ever want to contact him? Why didn't he contact me? You know there were questions there and I didn't want to ask my mother because obviously they had a very acrimonious divorce and my mum subsequently remarried. So he was just kind of erased from my life and also his culture, the Nigerian culture, was erased from my life.

Malcolm Stern:

Now that's quite interesting when we get a cultural sort of subtraction from our lives. Yes, and that makes a difference. And your stepfather, um, the woman, the man you're married, what was he like as a, as a father, or as a father figure, kind of hands off.

Camilla Balshaw:

I mean, john had a family, um, and so we never called him dad. We always called him by his first name, john um, and he was quiet, a very quiet presence. He was Jamaican, very light-skinned Jamaican. So initially, I think, when I was, when my mum started going out with him, I thought he was, I thought he was white um and he was. But then he had an incredibly strong Jamaican accent. So you had this white looking guy I. I mean there are white Jamaicans obviously. Now I know that, but at the time it was like whoa. It was really interesting that his voice was strong Jamaican patois and very light skin and he was very quiet. He also, you know, liked to drink, but wasn't particularly. We didn't see him as our dad and we never called him dad. He was always John.

Malcolm Stern:

Right, and what's quite interesting is that often what we do is we tend to marry or get together with someone either in our father's image or the opposite of our father's image, and it sounds like in some ways, you've had an opposite, an opposite pole, with your father and your stepfather a very charming, charismatic, sort of curious man, and then a very quiet sort of solid man. Yes, and I wonder what. You're married now, I believe I am yes, yeah. I wonder who you've married? And I've married Michael.

Camilla Balshaw:

Mike's, uh, from up north, mike's from Blackpool. We met when we were at university and, uh, yeah, mike's a gregarious character but he is a thoughtful, kind, loving, very present person, um, the complete opposite of my dad and and john, so you know he's very much his own person, um, and I've been with mike for over 30 years, so so, yeah, that's interesting for me that they're very different to my to my dad, yes, yes, completely different, and is your dad still alive now?

Camilla Balshaw:

He's not. My dad died. So basically I didn't hear from my dad, as I said, for 40 odd years. And then in 2014, I got a phone call, an out of the blue phone call, from a cousin saying or telling me that my dad wanted to get in contact. I didn't know. I had a cousin and he was going to be the go-between between us. So that was a shock after so long. It took a long time to process the fact that my dad wanted to contact me again and I decided I wanted to have a relationship with my cousin, not my father.

Malcolm Stern:

So there's some anger and resentment there also because of my mom.

Camilla Balshaw:

I thought that you know it was unfair on her really, because I was brought up, you know, with my mum being the matriarch and the patriarch and you know, when you've got a single mother although she had John when they got married it felt very much like my mum was. You know, she was everything.

Malcolm Stern:

Yeah.

Camilla Balshaw:

And so I kind of didn't want to upset her. So initially I just met my cousin, lovely, really interesting guy and we really got on. And then things kind of shifted and my father started. He gave my cousin a letter that he'd written and we started a tentative relationships too strong a word. We started a tentative getting to know one another right success which I write about in my book.

Camilla Balshaw:

And um, yeah, and then it was also quite interesting because I didn't mention this before, malcolm, but growing up, um, I was known by two different names. So, um, I think I mentioned at the beginning that Jamaican culture and Nigerian culture have very different naming traditions. So my dad is Yoruba Nigerian and to them, naming children should have meaning. Names have a story. There is a whole history around how you name a child, whereas for my mum she was brought up in Jamaica under a colonial rule and names in Jamaica were very British sounding. She wanted to call my sister Sarah and my brother Tony, but my dad registered their names. My brother was Abdul Babatunde, which is very different to Tony, and my sister was Aduni and I was Camilla, but that should have been spelt K-A-M-I-L-L-A-H.

Malcolm Stern:

Right.

Camilla Balshaw:

There's a T at the end, Camilla, but I think the person who registered me just thought it's Camilla. Let's, you know, write it the classic way.

Malcolm Stern:

It's a lovely name as well.

Camilla Balshaw:

It's a lovely name. But, my mum hated it and she didn't want us to have these Nigerian-sounding names. So she obviously was very upset with my dad and she decided that she wouldn't call me Camilla and she liked the name Mandy.

Camilla Balshaw:

So I was called Mandy up until about the first 24 years of my life, and that's something again I discuss in the book. And then when I met my dad, he actually didn't call me Camilla, he called me Amanda. He never really called me Mandy and when we were first contacting one another it was a really big thing for me to say look, my name is Camilla, you gave me the name, that is my name. I'm Camilla.

Malcolm Stern:

Now, Once I've reclaimed it again which I talk about through the book around naming um, again, which I talk about through the book, around naming, and well, that's that's interesting with your book. So your book, your book, is about naming and and obviously it's something that's been very deep in you and what? What does the book sort of, what's its its essence in in a sentence or two?

Camilla Balshaw:

yeah, it really talks about how our names are a marker of our self-identity and how important they are right and because for me, growing up, I was known by a name that actually wasn't my name in terms it wasn't on my birth certificate. I was never Mandy, was never changed by depot um. So it was about me reclaiming my name and I suppose also along with that, it's about reclaiming my Nigerian-ness, although that Nigerian-ness was tinged with an estranged father.

Malcolm Stern:

Yes, it's still part of your essence and actually you've been reclaiming yourself, it sounds like, for most of your life.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yes, absolutely yes.

Malcolm Stern:

I know that you've been through some serious health issues and that's been something that's really helped sort of shape you. So one of the adversities you've come through is how to manage the health issues, and I know they were mainly gynaecological. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about that.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yeah, so from about the age of 10, I always had incredibly painful periods and I think when you go to the doctor, especially back in the, you know, in the 80s, your doctor was this man in a white coat behind a big desk, very intimidating. And I remember going to the doctors with my mum and trying to explain I had incredibly. You know they were painful, I was vomiting, um, sometimes the pain was so extreme I couldn't walk and I remember one GP just saying you know you'll grow out of it. It's something all women have. All women have pain.

Malcolm Stern:

It's part of being a woman it sounds like a misogynist to me, but anyway, carry right on completely.

Camilla Balshaw:

And this was this was the case. Really, growing up, I mean, I saw, uh gosh, just a huge amount of GPs. He said the same thing. Really, suck it up, buttercup, it will go away, you'll get better, don't complain about it. Um, and you know, the pain was getting just increasingly more extreme as I got older and I had to mask the pain with, you know, painkillers or you know I had to just deal with a huge amount of extreme pain and there was no name for it. You know, I just I assumed it was also just painful periods. But then, when you talk to other women about their menstrual cycle and they weren't having the same amount of pain I was having, so I knew something was wrong. And when I met Michael, my husband, I knew something was wrong. And I remember telling him that, you know, something just doesn't feel right. And I think at that age, in my early 20s, I was concerned about fertility, but I was so young that I just thought I'd be fine, you know, and things would kind of work themselves out like that.

Malcolm Stern:

You'd met the man that you were to marry, who you'd fallen in love with, and it sounds like a very healthy relationship from what you've described to me before. Yes, but here you haven't replicated your mum and dad's relationship.

Camilla Balshaw:

You've actually created a strong relationship, and yet there's some suffering within the relationship that actually the relationship wasn't able to bear fruit effectively no, and so I was diagnosed, I think in my 30s, early 30s, with endometriosis and I was told well, the best cure is to get pregnant. But obviously it's very difficult to get pregnant when you have endometriosis. So it was a very difficult journey for us, you know. Um, we wanted to have children and I was also told that IVF would not work for me. My endometriosis was so severe that really the best route was adoption, which was something that we did look into and subsequently didn't go down that path. So it was having to deal with and I suppose it's a continual process of not having children and it is a loss, a huge loss, and I suppose for Mike and I we had to go through a painful process of working out the kind of life we wanted to have without children in it. Do you know what I mean?

Malcolm Stern:

and um was Michael sort of. He went along with it and was sort of like solid as a rock with it incredibly supportive, incredibly.

Camilla Balshaw:

I think it helps that Mike's an acupuncturist uh-huh yeah, and so it was a journey we went through together. I never felt alone at all. I felt incredibly supported by him, yes, and I think we came. Yeah, I mean it's it's because it's funny, because friends of ours say, oh, you dealt so well with it. But I think there is that idea, isn't there, that the cards you're dealt in life you have to go through a process of, in our case, grieving for what we didn't have and coming out strong with the other side.

Malcolm Stern:

Absolutely, and that's very powerful. I remember one group that I was running at one time and it never really struck me the pain of not being able to have children, and one of the women in the group dealt with the major issue of her life, which was not being able to have children, and went into some really deep grief and it triggered in some of the other women in the group the same grief who also hadn't been able to have children and I hadn't actually realized up to that point how profound that is for a woman and it's almost like a part of her is not allowed to be, to be in play, and and they they deal with it, often with suppression. They deal with it with sort of like diversion, by sort of creating big careers or something like that. But at the end of the day it sits there and I'm wondering how that impacted for you.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yes, and you have to let it sit there for a while and you have to let that pain sit there and the grief sit there, and I think for me what really helped was yoga and a meditation practice practice.

Malcolm Stern:

So out of the struggle also comes the resourcing. You actually find the resources you need to be able to come through and not only survive this, this difficulty, but to thrive through it yes, hugely, and I think because I started meditating.

Camilla Balshaw:

Um, Mike and I lived in Tokyo in our 20s, mid-20s and I went along to the Passioner meditation retreat in Kyoto. Actually it was 10 days and it was quite a thing because I'd not really done a huge amount of meditation before. So here I was, I sort of rocked to Kyoto very, you know, thinking I can do this, I can meditate for long stretches of time. And obviously I couldn't. So for the first couple of days I was in complete agony. I was 26, I think at the time, and it was a real. Once I got through the pain of that again, I just sat and learned to sit, and learned to be very present and learned to be very quiet and actually I learned to be in my body yoga practice and meditation practice.

Malcolm Stern:

Really I can't explain how much, but it really helped me through the process of not being able to have children but actually that's exactly what we're looking at in this, in this series, is how we actually get resourced and what those resources do for us. And I'm hearing that you found some very wise resources, because the the other extreme of that would be to drink, would be to use addictive substances, would be to find ways of blocking off from what's going on. In fact, what you did was you dived in and found something in yourself and and you probably and I'm guessing I'm sorry I'm making an assumption here as well but you probably wouldn't have gone down that road if things had been sort of sugary, sweet and easy.

Camilla Balshaw:

I don't know. I mean, I think I've always been quite nonconformist, quite interested in spirituality, interested in who I am as a person, yeah, interesting in what makes us human. So, yeah, I've always been interested in finding out about my own potential and my sense of self.

Malcolm Stern:

So, yeah, possibly, who knows, I think I would have always started it sounds like it's innate in you as well and it's like you know, very often, um like our, our gifts emerge. We are, we are all blessed with different gifts and there's a different curse is the wrong word but also different trials and tribulations that we go through as human beings. But, of course, one of the ways in which we are most able to ride comfortably or ride wisely through this life is to find spiritual practice, and it sounds like you did that in a big way.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yeah, I really did, and also I think having time out of the UK was really profound. It had a profound effect on me, especially living in Asia, in Tokyo, I think, in your 20s, to be in such a different culture, really informed who I am today, actually living in Asia. I was there for five years and I think when you're out of your own environment you have to be resilient. You know you really have to rely on yourself and other people around you, but you're in a completely different environment and culture and so I think that was hugely beneficial for me in my 20s. I'm really glad I was there from sort of 24 to 29 in Japan, learning about different styles of yoga, meditation and different types of people. I met a huge, vast array of people there.

Malcolm Stern:

So, yeah, I think it was really formative and presumably michael was sort of on a similar path, so that actually you were exploring together, which deepens the relationship, rather than you pulling in one direction and him pulling in a different one yeah, 100, absolutely, we're both um interesting.

Camilla Balshaw:

Mike got into yoga before me, actually, and that's why initially, I didn't want to go, because he was. I'd wake up and find him doing some salutations in the kitchen, thinking what's he doing? And then slowly I thought that's quite cool, I'm gonna try, um. So yeah, so it has been a journey that we've been on together and, yeah, I mean I'm I'm really lucky, uh, to have found Mike and to have been on this, this journey of understanding and learning, holding hands with him throughout. I'm not saying it's all been perfect, but we've got through it.

Malcolm Stern:

You know we've got through it.

Camilla Balshaw:

But you get through it and I certainly have.

Malcolm Stern:

It's interesting because one of the sort of templates I've got for relationships is that um is that we have to connect at an intellectual and emotional, physical and a spiritual level. Physical is not just about sex, it's also about being in the world together. Now, if you were in tokyo together or if you were in japan together for five years, um, that's, that's either going to really strengthen the relationship or cause a lot of rifts in it, and presumably that strengthened your relationship hugely, massively strengthened our relationship, um, and that's why I think it was so interesting going out there after we just finished university.

Camilla Balshaw:

We met when we were at university and then to to be in a foreign country. In your 20s, especially in the 90s, life was very different. There were no mobile phones uh, my parents couldn't facetime me, my mother, you know. We just had letters. It was letter writing and phone calls, um. So you very much were on your own in terms of the friendships that you made and the relationship I have with mike. So we created our own little um specific unit out there, almost because we didn't have those forms of communication that you do now. It's funny because my nephews and nieces now say, oh gosh, I wish we were around in the 90s where you could just, you know, go off and not have to necessarily feel like you want to send an email or a.

Camilla Balshaw:

WhatsApp to a family member. You can just let them know you're okay. And then just get on with your life, yeah.

Malcolm Stern:

Well, one of the things I've written about in my book Slay your Dragons With Compassion, which the podcast has used the same title as that, is that one of the resources we have is the creation of sangha, which is of spiritual community, and it sounds like you and Mike have established a sangha together. You'll also have your own. You know, your own friends and your own sort of community, which I'm sure you've got. Perhaps we can take a look at that as well, but that for me, feels like a super strength that we can get through the world with.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yes, hugely, it really is. You really need that sense of support and sense of self and sense of belief and trust in other people as well, because fundamentally, people are lovely, you know, and you know you've got to just, you've got to just open yourselves up to human kindness also.

Malcolm Stern:

That's a very positive view you have of the world there, camilla, as well, because I've often thought fundamentally, people are bastards. I don't think that now. I think that there's an extreme, and I think some people are almost saintly and others are sort of so damaged that they become very destructive. But actually, if you see people as lovely underneath, that's what you're going to be meeting out there as well.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yeah. I think I recognize that you know there are some baddens in the world, obviously, but I think, yeah, I mean I try to see the good in people as much as I can.

Malcolm Stern:

Again, that's a practice. You know that. That's something that actually gives you strength by by feeding on that creates a neural pathway of good.

Camilla Balshaw:

yeah yeah, I hope so and I hope, um, I hope people see the good in me, um you know, and I, as a very yoga teacher of ours, um very wise yoga teacher, said that, um, in life, when you need the most, you'll find the angels in life that's lovely, yes and it really stayed with me and I thought you know he's right, because that's happened a lot in my life that people step through the door, that you just are just good, kind and helpful, and I always remember this particular teacher's words and, yeah, always really resonated with me that there are angels that just appear when you need them the most. Um, and I think that's rather lovely, don't you?

Malcolm Stern:

I think it's amazing and I agree with you as well. I think that people do come our way. It's like Jung said everything is synchronicity and synchronicity is right. People come our way and, for example, if we go back to your health challenges, we can look at all these, the medics who actually didn't actually meet you where you needed to be met and didn't find a way of helping you, but ultimately, presumably you did find the person who was able to actually help you navigate this quite serious struggle.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yes, and I also think with something like women's health, if you just sort of think about that for a moment. I mean, women haven't been listening to you by the medical establishment for decades, have they?

Malcolm Stern:

For so long I think it's. Our civilization has actually devalued women.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yes, and so even now, you know, I mean, I was diagnosed with endometriosis in the 90s and I don't think that much has changed. For women with gynaecological issues, I think it's still very difficult to get a diagnosis. I think lots of GPs still say you'll grow out of it. It's just period pain, which is incredibly sad, annoying, frustrating, um, I've read many memoirs, um and books around women's health and, yeah, the situation is quite dire still, um, and I touch upon it in my book a little bit because named my story, named A Story of Reclaiming and Reclaiming who you Are, is a real journey of naming, but it weaves in social commentary, around health, around race, around identity, class, belonging, all those issues that have affected me in my lifetime.

Camilla Balshaw:

So, although names are the central theme that hang the book together, it's actually about quite a lot more than that. Yeah, um, and my journey with my health, yeah, I mean it was, it was, it was tough and I think for me I was very lucky, because very lucky I mean my endometriosis, what they call medically, burnt itself out. It got to a point where the pain just I was going to ask you that.

Malcolm Stern:

So where are you now with it? But actually it feels like you, like you're on the other side.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yeah, completely healthy and don't have any pain, and you know so and that sort of. From my 40s, early 40s onwards, things started to really shift and I didn't go down any invasive medical surgeries. I was told to have a hysterectomy when I was very young and just thought no, I'm not, um, so for me I mean I use the word lucky with endometriosis, I just like I say I think I I yoga, meditation, acupuncture.

Malcolm Stern:

knowing that this would pass helped me it's interesting because you say it burned itself out. But my guess is that somewhere along the way you actually found a way of putting yourself in alignment that actually helped it. It passed through you as well yeah, very true.

Camilla Balshaw:

Yeah, I also. I went. I said, well, I saw a very interesting um acupuncturist I think I was in London, back in London at this point and he asked a question no one had asked and he said well, why do you think you have endometriosis, why do you think you have this pelvic pain?

Malcolm Stern:

um, and I thought that was such an interesting question well, it allows there to be a psychological realm as well to our illnesses. Yes, yeah.

Camilla Balshaw:

So I didn't answer him straight away. I said I'll have to, I don't know, I think. I said I don't know and then I left his consultation room and then went back to my flat in I think we were living in London at the time and just really thought about it and thought, well, why, why have I got this pain? What's it telling me? Um, and I think maybe there were lots of emotional issues there around my dad, perhaps around family estrangement, around maybe naming. Who knows that I think I think sometimes our body, our body, can tell us or show us when there's a problem, when there's a blockage. I really do believe that. So I I went away really thinking, well, well, that's maybe why, maybe that's why.

Malcolm Stern:

Yeah, that's lovely, camilla. So we're coming towards the end of our podcast and it's been a really lovely conversation. Consider we've never had a proper conversation, we've only met online before. But I just feel like I know you quite well from today's exploration and the question I ask at the end of the podcast is what's the particular dragon you've had to slay, what's the hurdle you've had to overcome to be who you are?

Camilla Balshaw:

Wow, well, I think I think a big one for me actually is around reclaiming my birth name actually so the hence the book and hence your real exploration.

Camilla Balshaw:

You're diving deep into that as well yeah, I think that has been huge and actually, um, taking ownership of my identity, in that the name on my birth certificate is who I am, not a name that my mum just happened to just like because it had two syllables Mandy, um, and really taking my name back, I think has been a journey and a half, because it encapsulates issues around identity and my dad and my Nigerian background, and now I think I've really I'm my mother and father's daughter.

Malcolm Stern:

You know, I really feel You've actually found the way of weaving it all together through all of the adventures and struggle you've had. Yes, yeah, so much for being with us.

Camilla Balshaw:

You're welcome. I've really enjoyed it. Malcolm, really lovely talking to you lovely.

Malcolm Stern:

Thank you very much, camilla thank you very much.

Camilla Balshaw:

Okay, thank you very much, take care.

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