PHP can no longer read scripts outside DOCUMENT_ROOT

[JustSomeUser]

(Suggestions for a more appropriate forum are welcome.)

On the last day of September, 2019, something fundamental changed in the way my GoDaddy managed WordPress site manages the run-time servicing of page requests. My child theme's functions.php includes scripts outside the document root by doing this:

$document_root = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] ;
include( "{$document_root}/../my-scripts/setup.php" ); // Read setup from /home/my-username/my-scripts

This worked for years, but is failing now because PHP cannot access the files in $document_root/..

$document_root is /var/www and is temporarily linked somehow to be /home/my-username/html (both of those paths have the same inode). However, $document_root/.. is /var, which is not /home/my-username, so PHP cannot see my /home/my-username/my-scripts directory. Making the relative path an absolute one to /home/my-username/my-scripts changes nothing - PHP can see /home but cannot see /home/my-username.

Playing around with the PHP directives like open_basedir, include_path, or doc_root have not helped so far- PHP just cannot see files in my home directory unless they are also inside html/.

Did something change last month to break this? More importantly, how do I now correctly access files outside $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] from my PHP scripts? Thanks for any tips or suggestions.