Ricky D. Strickland was born in Memphis, Tennessee on June 6, 1967 but grew up in Columbus, Ohio. His Family includes four brothers and two sisters. He is married to Andrea Strickland and has three children. Rick served in the military from March 18, 1987 to June 30, 2012. In January of 1998, he reported onboard Naval Station Bremerton where he distinguished himself as a top performer in his profession. As the combined bachelor housing’s front desk supervisor and command drug and alcohol advisor, He took on several command and community tasks as follows: West Hill tutoring program, Petty Officer Indoctrination Team, Junior Sailor of the Quarter Chairperson, Seattle’s Feeding program on weekends and Drug Education for youth (DEFY). He was selected Sailor of the Quarter 1999 and Sailor of the Year, 1999.
Chris Strickland was born in 1971 in the Columbus Ohio. His Family includes four brothers and two sisters. He received his high school diploma from Northland High School. Chris majored and graduated Cum Laude in Computer Engineering at Wilberforce University, the oldest historically black university in the USA. He is married with two beautiful daughters, 20 and 11.
Upon graduation, Chris began his career as a System Administrator in the automotive industry at EDS, a subsidiary of General Motors, in Pontiac Michigan. After several successful years at EDS, Chris decided to return home to Columbus and began his career as a Network Technician with the State of Ohio. It was in Columbus where Chris began digging deeper into the Word of God and getting the truth on family and relationships. His passion for helping others began to increase rapidly. Chris currently leads bible studies and spends most of his time teaching his children about the ways of God.
BPM: Introduce us to your latest book. What genre is this book?
The Deep Confessions of Faithful Men is a relationship book that speaks on the behalf of men, allowing them to share the truth to women. It’s a book that allows men to openly and honestly express themselves about things that they normally would only talk about around other men. The book also allows women to finally get answers to why their man is the way he is and what is really going on in his mind. The Deep Confessions of Faithful Men is currently available via Nook, ITunes, Paperback, and Windows.
BPM: What topics does your latest book address? Why?
Our latest book, The Deep Confessions of Faithful Men, discusses topics such as marriage and infidelity because of the divorce rate being over 50%. When one notices a pattern of destruction happening over and over again, it’s time to investigate why it’s happening and how to resolve it.
BPM: Who does your work speak to?
Our work speaks to married women, single women, married men and single men. It is truly a book for anyone currently in a relationship/marriage, recently out of a relationship/marriage, or the one who has not had a relationship in a long time.
BPM: You believe strongly in:
We believe strongly in God. For without Him, absolutely nothing can be accomplished.
BPM: Faith allows you to:
Faith allows us to not depend upon our own selves, but to trust God to accomplish his own will.
BPM: Your greatest accomplishment as a writer:
Our greatest accomplishment as writers was being able to team up together, brother with brother and provide priceless information through a book that can help bring real change to people’s lives for the better.
BPM: Success means:
Success means living a lifestyle that positively impacts others in such a way that it’s impossible for them to remain the same when they leave your presence.
Excerpt from The Deep Confessions of Faithful Men
Why write another book about male/female relationships? Why regurgitate the same relationship myths and assumptions? Why do we need another one? This book is for those who want to add structure back to their families, to make relationships stronger, to make marriages affair proof, and to provide a roadmap for change in the lives of our children. We believe the way to accomplish these changes is through the hearts of men.
Since the beginning of time, men believed actions spoke louder than words. We are known to be action oriented individuals. We are protectors and providers. If there is a problem we try and fix it. If our family is in danger, we protect them. It is what we’ve been taught from our youth. We are taught to become a pro: a protector and a provider. We were never really allowed to express how we felt about certain things. When we were kids playing a sport, if we got hurt we had to tough it out. Crying was not an option. We may have stepped out for a play or two, but we had to get right back in the game. We learned from a young age not to express our true feelings about things. As a result of this we stand in the position that we do today: though we are physically the stronger of the human creation, we are still unable to express our most intimate feelings. This is a real challenge to our manhood. It’s not so much that we are unable to express our feelings. It’s more that we are not “allowed” to express them. All of our life it has been prohibited. Part of it is due to our protective instincts as men. We don’t want to emotionally hurt the person that we are dealing with so we withhold the truth.
The other part of it is our upbringing. We just simply have not been raised to express intimacy or our true feelings. These true feelings are what make up the deep confessions of faithful men. It’s how we really and truly want to respond to things, but haven’t been at liberty to do so.
We believe that if we can uncover the layers of true confessions buried deep within men, our families will turn around. Our children will respect their elders once again. Our little girls will know the true worth of their bodies and not throw them away in an attempt to gain attention. Our young men will learn to respect themselves and others.
Our marriages will be rooted in love and bounded by a spiritual truth that is blessed by God. The only way to begin the process of rebuilding families is to uncover the deeply rooted confessions of men. These confessions are only known to a few: God, himself, and his closest friend.
One must ask why it is or how is it that these confessions have laid dormant within the hearts of men for all these years? The answer is simple: all for the sake of trying to find a sense of peace. We bottle up a lot of things inside of us for the sake of peace. Now here is a way to begin to release all of the stress, all of the pain, all of the suffering that we’ve held onto for years. We want to give men the opportunity to be open and honest without being judged by the women in our lives.
We want men to finally have the opportunity to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We want to give women an understanding of what men are faced with on a day to day basis. It does not matter what religious organization a man belongs to, he is still faced with the same challenges as any other man. Once you peel back all the layers of religion and race only one thing remains; a man.
(Reprinted with permission from Black Pearls Magazine)
