Claire Dwyer

Mom, Wife, Interior Life — that’s it in a nutshell. Claire’s been devouring books and pouring the words back out again longer than she can remember. It’s where her love of God and the Catholic faith finds its fullest expression. Claire has a certification in Spiritual Theology from the Avila Institute and is currently in the graduate program at St. Vincent Seminary’s Institute of Ministry Formation for Spiritual Direction. She has an undergraduate degree in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, where she serves on the Advisory Board of the Leadership Institute. Her roles as writer, editor, spiritual director, and lifelong student of the interior life all came together in her first book, “This Present Paradise: A Spiritual Journey with St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.” which quickly became a best-seller, due in part to having the honor of being chosen by the Abiding Together Podcast for its 2021 Lenten Book Study. She is also a contributor to Blessed is She’s Lenten devotional, New Wine, which released in January 2023. She is under contract for another book and between that, working full-time for the Avila Foundation as editor of spiritualdirection.com, coaching, teaching, and raising a handful of growing kids, she still manages to find time for a few slowly-savored pages of reading almost every (tired) night. She has a passion for helping women in particular see the beauty and possibility in their own interior lives and their unrepeatable place in the Church and for Catholic writers to be encouraged and formed in their writing journey. She is co-founder and content director of Write These Words and the PraiseWritersCatholic Writing Membership Community. Most importantly, she has been married for 25 years to her husband Delaney and they have six children and one grandchild. Connect and keep in touch with her at ClaireDwyer.com.

Articles By Claire Dwyer

To Be Salt and Light: The Well-Formed Writer

“In the end, it comes down to just that—what are you called to?  But if you are called to communicate the Faith, and feel drawn to deepening your formation with a respected certification program, then you can be confident that others will see your completion of it as a sign of credibility.” – Claire Dwyer

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Daily Bread

“Jesus Christ did not come into the world to give us the grace to do it all, but to liberate us from the illusion that we possibly can. This opens up the hope that God will always provide, and the vision to see that He already, always has—not in color-coded schedules, but in a creative brilliance of unpredictable days as only He can.” – Claire Dwyer

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The Necessary Luxury of Slow

“Humbled, I recommitted to what I knew to be true: the spiritual life is better as a sit-down dinner than a drive-through.  And in both eating and praying, I needed to allow myself the necessary luxury of slow.” – Claire Dwyer 

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Advent: A Sacred Ache

“It seemed like centuries of ache coursing through me. It blew through caverns in me I didn’t know were there. I gave in to it.  I gave it space to wail itself out.” – Claire Dwyer

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