What words do you use to describe yourself, your choices, and your life?

What words do you speak when you are encouraging your children? Better yet, what words do you reach for when you are disciplining them?

Does what you say come from a place of earnest and positivity or frustration and haste?

More often than we think, the words that we speak manifest as truths and set certain standards for our lives. Since she was a little girl, author Leona Carter has known how her words–even those that escaped her mouth without thought–can impact others and herself. In these pages, readers may follow her through the many instances of her life in which she has spoke her dreams and aspirations into realities and earned her the strong ties she now has to her community and her family, the Carter Crew.

Part memoir and part guidebook, Because I Said So! illustrates how readers can not only better their own lives through positive, supportive, and forward-looking words, but how they can also teach their children about confidence, faith, hard work, and self-love in a productive manner. Change and hope begins from the insides and is spoken out: Make it happen because you said so!