Why the “Third Place” matters, especially for women

For most of human history, our lives weren’t centred solely around home and work. Instead, they unfolded in shared places in between: the fire circle, the communal hearth, the market, the shade of a big tree. These places were where people gathered, exchanged stories, cared for each other, learned from each other, and built life together.
Sociologists call these “third places”: social environments outside of home (first place) and work (second place). And they’re essential if we want to remember what it feels like to truly belong and to be human.

These spaces matter even more deeply for women and it was in those spaces that female friendships and women’s community have shaped human survival itself.

In anthropology and evolutionary biology, research shows that human beings are hyper-social animals. Unlike many other mammalian species, we evolved in cooperative networks sharing food, childcare, knowledge, and protection. Our minds and cultures grew out of the ways we lived together, not just beside each other.

For women in particular, community meant survival. Anthropological studies of hunter-gatherer societies reveal that women spend significant amounts of time with other women and children in shared tasks: gathering, preparing food, caring for infants, weaving social bonds that knit the group together. Within these networks, women exchange not just labor but emotional support, wisdom, and cultural knowledge which is essential in raising the next generation.

Research into alloparenting — a term for caregiving that happens from people other than biological parents shows that women historically and cross-culturally have relied on each other in raising children, tending the sick, and maintaining community memory. Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in her work on cooperative breeding, explains that human mothers have never raised children alone. We evolved in systems where sisters, grandmothers, aunts, and unrelated women all played active roles in childcare. These interdependent networks didn’t just make motherhood easier; they made it possible. Without them, our ancestors would not have thrived.

And within these networks, something even more powerful happened: intergenerational exchange.

Older women passed down practical knowledge — how to birth, how to heal, how to forage, how to read the seasons. They transmitted emotional wisdom — how to endure grief, how to repair relationships, how to lead with steadiness. Younger women brought vitality, new perspectives, and continuity. Anthropologists studying the “grandmother hypothesis” suggest that the extended lifespan of human females — long past reproductive years — may itself be an evolutionary advantage, precisely because grandmothers enhance the survival of grandchildren and strengthen social cohesion.

In other words, the village was not sustained by isolated nuclear families. It was sustained by circles of women across ages, each contributing something essential.

What we are creating at Roots is not something new. It is something ancient remembering itself.

Roots is our modern third place — a space outside of productivity and obligation, where women can gather not to perform, compete, or prove, but to be. A space where stories are shared, where strength is cultivated collectively, where younger women can learn from those who have walked further, and where older women can feel the vitality and creativity of those just beginning. A space where mentorship happens naturally, not hierarchically. Where community is not a marketing word but a lived experience.

In a culture that prizes independence, women are often left carrying invisible loads alone. But our biology, our anthropology, and our history tell a different story: we are wired for mutual care. We regulate stress through connection. We grow resilient through shared experience. We become wiser in relationship.

When women gather intentionally, something ancient activates. Nervous systems settle. Stories surface. Identity strengthens. Belonging returns.

Roots is an invitation back to that village.
Back to the circle.
Back to the third place where women remember that they were never meant to do life alone.