GUTS

Show Up and Show Out: Jess Russ on Goodwill Clothes, Grammy Dreams, and the Art of Giving Yourself Permission

Jess Russ grew up believing she was the mustard seed. Not the faith required to see the tree — the seed itself. Five feet of something that didn't look like much from the outside but carried everything needed to become something larger than itself.

Jess Russ on GUTS

Jess grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, in a three-bedroom apartment across the tracks from engineers and Boeing employees and families who got new cars at sixteen. She showed up to award ceremonies in thrifted clothes and made them look better than anyone else's. She choreographed the family talent shows instead of performing in them because she wanted everyone to be in the right place. And she walked onto lacrosse fields and music stages knowing she wasn't going to outscore anyone or out sing anyone, but that when she was done, something would have happened that wouldn't have happened without her.

In February 2025, she became a Grammy-winning songwriter after co-writing "That's My King" by CeCe Winans, a song she'd written four years earlier in a room full of strangers who became family. She stood at the podium and said, God is kind. Then she went home and started wondering if she'd already peaked.

The Upscale Mentality

There is a specific kind of resourcefulness that poverty and difference teach you that money can't buy later. Jess calls it upscaling — taking what you have, what others might have thrown away, and making it shine. It started with clothes. It extended to music, to writing, to presence in rooms where she was the only one who looked like her, the only one who didn't have the resources everyone else had.

She identifies something in herself that runs deeper than ambition: the need to prove that showing up mattered even when the résumé didn't match. She wanted to be the best defensive player on the field even if she'd never score the goal. She wanted her essays to say something no one else had thought to say, even if the grammar was shaky. She wanted to make you cry singing a song, even if someone else could hit every note more cleanly. The intangibles, that was her territory, and she knew it early.

The Anxiety That Wouldn't Let Her Win

What nobody prepared her for was what happened when the yeses started coming. Earlier in 2024, before the Grammy, things were accumulating — opportunities, recognition, momentum. And instead of joy, she felt terror. The receiving of good things started to feel more threatening than the rejection. She broke out in hives. She started going through the motions. By March, she says, she was a shell of herself and everyone around her could see it. Then came a budget cut and she lost her job. This right after a string of wins.

She took three months off. Watched lacrosse games. Started playing golf badly. Wrote music she didn't care if anyone heard. And then she drove back through Alabama, alone, visiting places that had held both comfort and trauma, including a barbecue spot where she sat with a plate of ribs and asked herself the question she'd been avoiding: what am I actively afraid of?

The answer, when it came, surprised her. It wasn't failing to meet other people's expectations. It was failing to meet her own and arriving at the destination alone, having moved so fast that everyone she loved was fifteen miles behind her.

The Target Sign

There is a detail from this period that lands like a parable. During one of what she calls her “sad girl hours,” sitting on her couch with a Sprite, shopping on the Target website because she needed an outfit and had waited too long, she came across a neon sign. It said: Go Team. She bought it. It sits on her desk now.

The message it gave her was not motivational in the expected sense. It was more honest than that. Until you have the team you want, you have to be the team you have. Sometimes you show up to the starting line and there's nobody cheering. You run the race anyway. And maybe one day you look up and the stands are full. But if they never fill, are you still going to run?

The Song That Waited Four Years

"That's My King" was written in 2020 in a room full of strangers who became, in the writing, family. It sat. It found its way to CeCe Winans. And then, four years after it was written, it won a Grammy at the 67th Annual Awards. Jess stood at the podium and said what she felt: God is kind. Not ‘I worked hard enough.’ Not ‘this is what preparation plus opportunity looks like.’ Just: “God is kind.”

She pushed back on the standard success formula that it's preparation meeting opportunity in a way that reveals everything about how she thinks. She wasn't prepared. Her willingness to show up was. Her willingness to just be Jess was.

The GUTS Lesson

Jess Russ is twenty-seven. She's carrying a Grammy, a fear of having peaked, a loyalty tattoo on her ribs, and a neon Go Team sign on her desk. She's driving through Alabama asking herself hard questions over plates of ribs, trying to get back to the seven-year-old who choreographed the talent show because she wanted everyone to be in the right place.

What she's learning in real time, in a season of both success and loss, is that showing up is showing out. That you don't always have to be the strongest person in the room. That the dream arriving before you're ready for it is still the dream arriving. And that the permission you've been waiting for, from the industry, from the audience, from anyone, was always yours to give yourself first.