People Always See the Butterfly: A Campfire Conversation with Carlos Walker

I sat down with my friend Carlos Walker in front of a fireplace at a friend’s house in Bethesda, Maryland. We met at the Returning Citizens Luncheon in Virginia in 2024, and since then we’ve built a friendship through weekly texts and the kind of honesty many people don’t know how to offer.

Carlos spent 13 years in prison. Since coming home, he’s sold over 14,000 copies of his book hand to hand, standing in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture nearly every day for four years. He’s given away 3,500 books to kids. And he texts people just to tell them he loves them.

We talked about what love actually means, how he learned vulnerability inside a system designed to harden people, and why the stories we hide are often the ones other people need most. Carlos said something that stays with me: “People always see the butterfly. But you have to hear the caterpillar story.” He believes hiding your past robs others of the proof that transformation is possible.

He also reframed a verse from Genesis. Be fruitful and multiply isn’t just about making children, he said. It’s about ideas. Thoughts. Impact. Every book he puts in a kid’s hands is a seed.

Carlos sees love as something that flows through you, not just to you. If you stop giving it because someone didn’t give it back, you cut off the flow for everyone downstream. That’s a question worth sitting with.

Read the full piece on Substack.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.