In our newest book, “[Hearts and Collars](www.heartsandcollars.com)”, we talk about the importance of ordeal rituals in our power exchange dynamic.

We also discussed this during the Book Club of MAsT: San Diego last night.

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For us, these ordeal rituals are a rite a passage. An ‘earning’ of the roles we are about to embark on, if you will.

One of the main ordeal rituals I went through…..huh….I was going to say it was the one Dan put me through at our first collaring….but that’s not true. The first would have been his first interview of me. That was so many years ago. This is August? Wow. We are coming up on the 24th anniversary of that first interview. He put me through things to test if I was ready to be his submissive. I passed, but it was hard. Definitely an ordeal. It was my first real experience with fully submitting.

Then, at the collaring over 2 years later. He made me serve the people we had invited to our collaring ritual. I messed up and he called me out on it in front of everyone. Punished me. Threw the collar across the room. Put me face down on the floor with his foot in my back, telling me to stay there while everyone else went downstairs. Told me to think about whether this is what I wanted. If it wasn’t, to get up and walk out the door. If it was and I thought I had it in me to do this, then to crawl across the room and pick up the collar, go downstairs and present it to Him and ask for forgiveness in embarrassing him in front of his friends and beg for His collar to be placed around my throat.

This may sound hard, but let me tell you, it was even harder than it sounds in the words I’ve put here.

I’ve watched him put a few people through the paces of an ordeal ritual before he’ll collar them. They need to earn the right of His collar. Kame bat and slave jem come to mind and they were rough to watch. Bat’s took place at The Room. I recently came across some of the items that were used in that ritual. Jem’s took place in the woods a short distance from our house. My job was to warn her that it wouldn’t be easy. I did. She decided to go through with it anyway. It was rough and she made it through it.

And when we are done with the ritual…..or at least when I’ve completed each ordeal, I feel like I’ve earned the right to wear His collar. I’ve earned it. It wasn’t just given to me. He considered our relationship serious enough to put the energy into a trial and I went through something that proved it’s what I wanted.

A Rite of Passage into the next phase of ‘us’.