“We just did not see the same spring and summer that we did last year,” said Amanda.

“Especially in The Dalles community, when the economy starts to shift downward, we don’t really have a lot of disposable income and a lot of tourism, and this summer we’ve seen multiple businesses close and unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be the last one to close. We’re going to continue to see this be an issue,” said Polehn.

“I would just encourage everyone to support small businesses while they can. Small businesses in our community are doing everything in their power to stay open…It really only takes a few bad months for a small business.”

When asked what her favorite thing to come out of the Starseed experience was, Amanda’s answer might surprise you: providing grief support to her customers.

“My favorite thing, that I wasn’t expecting, was that a lot of people would come in for items related to grief,” said Amanda, “because there’s not a lot of spaces for people to go in this community to engage in that specific process of grief and it’s such a communal process.”