Waiting Family Profiles

Home Location: Twin Cities Metro

Family Status: Couple with Children

Children in Home: One

Child Ethnicity: African American, Asian, Caucasian, East Indian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American

Dear Expectant Parents

We are A.J. and Whitney Sheridan and we have been praying for you since long before we entered the adoption process.

We made the decision that our family would be made through adoption very early in our relationship, and we hope that our collective passion for adoption and our immense love for both you and your child will ease some of the emotional burden you must be feeling right now.  We would be excited to begin a lifelong relationship with you in order to provide the best possible support system for your child.

About A.J. and Whitney

• We’ve been married since October 2015
• Whitney is a Pastor in the United Methodist Church
• A.J. works in Data Analytics
• We spend most of our time chasing after our 5-year-old son and our dogs. We also love to cook, play games with friends and family, lake time, and explore new places

About Our Family

• We adopted our son, Nehemiah (b. 2020) in early 2021. Neo is energetic, caring, and cannot wait to be a big brother!
• Nehemiah’s side of the family lives around the metro area and we see them often
• Whitney’s parents and brother’s family live in the metro, her sister’s family with two nieces live in Duluth
• AJ.’s dad lives in Rochester and his sister’s family with three nephews live in Granger, MN
• We have many friends nearby with young families, many made through adoption
• A.J.’s mom, uncle, and Whitney’s uncle were also adopted

Our Home

• We live in a single-family home in New Brighton, MN with a big fenced-in backyard, basketball court, vegetable gardens, and playset
• We have two mini schnauzers named Wally and Vinny
• We are within walking distance to an elementary and middle school

Our Promise to You

We understand that openness might be a significant question on your heart as you imagine what life might be like if you choose to make an adoption plan for your child.  Please know that should you choose us to parent your child, we hope for as open a relationship with you as you desire.  We have been blessed to have an open relationship with our son Nehemiah’s siblings, grandparents, and extended family.  We have seen the positives that come from maintaining those connections, and we will prioritize the connection to our children’s birth families as a natural and healthy part of being an adoptive family.

When our son entered our lives, we also became a trans-racial family.  We have taken this seriously in how our family operates, the choices we make, and the people we surround ourselves with.  We are committed to making sure our children always have safe and loving adults and peers around them who look like them and can speak to and companion them through life experiences that we might never understand. We will never stop learning and will strive to help our children understand more about their culture if it differs from our own.

We will celebrate our children’s stories, who they are, where they come from. We will be protective, respectful, and compassionate in how we talk about how our family came to be.  We will embrace our children’s birth parents and family as a part of our family.

We will provide a loving, safe, consistent, supportive, and fun home for our children.  We will let our children be messy and make mistakes.  We will throw birthday parties and host sleepovers.  We will help with homework and volunteer at school.  We will allow and encourage our children to pursue the full extent of who they are.  We will go out of our comfort zones to support the needs of our children, no matter what those needs may be.

For more information, please contact Essie Broich, our family’s adoption case worker, at [email protected].