A guide for anyone navigating breast cancer, and for those who want to show up better. When Vikki Espinosa heard “you have breast cancer,” everything shifted. This book blends honesty and practical tools. Not ready for the book? Download a free guide on how to help someone with cancer without hurting.
Vikki Espinosa is a writer, educator, and career strategist, and the author of One in Eight, a practical breast cancer guide for patients, caregivers, and workplaces. She has spent decades helping people navigate major life transitions, including illness, recovery, and career change, with clarity, compassion, and actionable tools. Her work blends lived experience, deep resilience, and steady guidance for anyone facing a diagnosis or supporting someone through it.
Her story includes recovering from a life-changing knee injury, learning to parafence with the U.S. Wheelchair Fencing Team, navigating disability, and moving through breast cancer with determination and clarity. These chapters shaped the grounded, practical approach she brings to her writing, teaching, and coaching.
Vikki lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Gus, their two daughters who live nearby, and their anxious-but-beloved rescue dog, Georgie. When she's not coaching, teaching, or writing, you'll find her lifting weights, walking Georgie, or at early-morning Pilates.
Vikki Espinosa is a writer, educator, and career strategist, and the author of One in Eight, a practical breast cancer guide for patients, caregivers, and workplaces. She has spent decades helping people navigate major life transitions, including illness, recovery, and career change, with clarity, compassion, and actionable tools. Her work blends lived experience, deep resilience, and steady guidance for anyone facing a diagnosis or supporting...
What happens when the day you feared becomes the day your life changes forever?
When Vikki Espinosa heard the words “You have breast cancer,” she was launched into a world of uncertainty, decisions, and the kind of exhaustion no one prepares you for. What began as a terrifying diagnosis became a journey through treatment, identity, resilience,...
One in Eight: A Guided Journal for Your Cancer Journey is a thoughtful, flexible companion for anyone moving through breast cancer treatment and recovery. Developed by survivor and educator Vikki Espinosa, this journal provides space to reflect on every stage of the journey: diagnosis, identity shifts, fear and uncertainty, chemo and radiation,...
Checklists, Scripts, and Support Tools for Every Step of Treatment
One in Eight: The Toolkit is a practical, no-nonsense companion for navigating cancer treatment—designed for patients, caregivers, clinicians, and workplaces who need clarity when everything feels overwhelming.
This isn’t a book you read cover to cover. It’s a working toolkit you can open to the page you need, when you need it.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt overwhelmed. Not just by the diagnosis, but by how quickly everything moved afterward. Appointments. New words. Decisions that felt urgent. Conversations I didn’t yet know how to have. I remember wishing there was something steady I could hold onto. Something that didn’t tell me how to feel, but helped me figure out what to do next. That’s why I created the One in Eight Breast Cancer Toolkit.
During treatment, my brain didn’t work the way it normally does. I forgot questions I meant to ask. I lost track of details I would usually hold easily. Some days, thinking felt heavy.
Chemo brain is real. It’s not just forgetfulness. It’s mental fatigue layered on top of physical exhaustion, and pretending it wasn’t happening didn’t help me cope. Writing things down helped. Not in a poetic or inspirational way. In a practical one. I wrote questions before appointments because I couldn’t...
I’m putting the finishing touches on the companion journal to One in Eight: a guided space for anyone moving through breast cancer treatment or supporting someone who is. It’s full of prompts, checklists, planning pages, grounding exercises, and room to breathe on the hard days.
The journal is headed to final design now, and I’ll share the cover and release date as soon as it’s ready. If One in Eight has been helpful to you or someone you love, I think this journal will give you (or them) a...
