When Words Become a Lifeline: Tom Oliver Says the Quiet Parts Out Loud.

Tom Oliver is who he is. He doesn’t feel the need to perform or impress, because his words effortlessly do the talking. There’s a sense that the language he uses has already done a lot of work long before it ever reaches another person.

Tom has lived on the Northern Beaches his whole life, but it wasn’t the place that shaped him most, it was the way he was raised. Born with a serious physical disability and using a wheelchair, he grew up in a household where he was never treated as fragile or different. His parents made a conscious decision to raise him exactly the same as his siblings - same expectations, same freedom, and the same clean up your room consequences.

That choice mattered more than they probably realised at the time. It taught Tom early on that there wasn’t anything 'wrong' with him. So when he started school, he entered the world open, confident and curious. Kids, he says, were far more accepting than adults. He made friends easily, laughed a lot, and found his place without having to explain himself. As a teenager, his life looked much like anyone else’s. Going out, experimenting, drinking and falling into and out of relationships. Those years between sixteen and eighteen were chaotic in the way most coming-of-age stories are - impulsive, messy and alive. He wasn’t sheltered from the world, and he didn’t want to be.

The anxiety arrived quietly at first, then all at once. Tom realised there was no clear blueprint for the life he was living. He had close friendships, intimacy and a packed social calendar, yet felt a pressure to keep being the version of himself everyone loved - outgoing, funny, charismatic. He worried that if he slowed down or let the cracks show, he’d lose the people around him. So he hid it.

He became very good at appearing fine. Too good, in fact. Drinking became a way to manage the anxiety, and drugs dulled the edges for a while. Eventually, the exhaustion caught up. What started as coping slid into depression, isolation and a deep desire to escape the constant noise inside his head.

There were weeks when Tom barely left his room. Being in a wheelchair meant many of the usual outlets available to his peers weren’t available - no running, no going to the gym, swimming laps, no physical release. What he had instead was a pen and a page. Writing didn’t begin as creativity, for Tom it began as survival.

During those darker periods, Tom kept a notes page on his phone called 'Tom thoughts'. It wasn’t meant to be shared. It was simply a place to unload what he couldn’t say out loud, to distract himself from the war he was fighting internally. Line by line, without intention or agenda, something began to take shape. What would later become 'Still Fire' was forming long before he understood what he was creating.

Still Fire

Tom's book 'Still Fire' didn’t arrive as a project or a plan. It emerged quietly, line by line, from moments when staying present felt harder than disappearing. What began as private notes - words written only to survive the day - slowly took shape into something cohesive, honest and unexpectedly resonant.

Tom’s poetry isn’t performative or abstract for the sake of it. It reads like someone finally saying the quiet parts out loud - the thoughts most of us keep looping internally but rarely articulate. His lines move between vulnerability and defiance, tenderness and grit, often in the same breath. There’s no attempt to soften the edges or dress pain up as something palatable. Instead, his work sits in the discomfort, and he lets the pain speak for itself. What makes his poetry land isn’t just the subject matter, but the restraint - the sense that every word has been earned. It feels less like art made for applause and more like language used as a way through.

That’s why Still Fire connects so deeply. It doesn’t ask to be admired. It simply offers recognition. For anyone who has lived inside anxiety, grief or the long quiet of feeling different, Tom’s words don’t explain the experience - they meet it.

Today, Tom speaks openly about the reality that mental health isn’t linear. It comes and goes. It frequently revisits old ground. Yet when it arrives now, it can still hit hard, but the difference is he no longer hides it. He tells his friends and family when he’s struggling, and they meet him exactly where he is, with no pressure to fix anything, no awkwardness, just steady, uncomplicated care.

Life after finishing the book hasn’t suddenly become glamorous. It’s been practical and grounded - flyering, promoting, putting himself out there, doing the unglamorous work of getting words into the world. What has surprised him most wasn’t the grind, but the response. Messages started coming in from people who recognised themselves in his story. People disclosed they cried reading his work, others said it gave them hope during their own difficult moments. Only then did Tom begin to see his life through a different lens - not as something extraordinary, but as something deeply resonant.

He’s clear about one thing: creativity isn’t born from suffering itself. It’s born from the need to stay alive inside it. From refusing to disappear. From choosing to speak instead of silence.

These days, Tom’s life looks nothing like what he once imagined. He’s a published author. A Spotify artist. A model. A writer whose words travel far beyond the Northern Beaches. More than anything, he’s content, not because life is easy, but because it’s honest.

Tom has always felt he was meant to be influential rather than to be 'famous'. He is seen as someone people come to for perspective, reassurance and truth. Someone who shows, quietly, that there is light - even when it feels distant.

Sometimes a revolution doesn’t arrive loudly. Sometimes it looks like a person sitting with a pen and a page, choosing to stay.

You can buy Tom's book here Tom Oliver.