You've got guts, empathy, and you're a great writer. The one "Where I'm from" that resonated with me, personally, was "We eat government cheese". That captures a lot. For a few years, when I was a child, we ate government cheese, and government meat. The cheese was fine, the meat virtually inedible, no matter what my mother did to it. Actually, where I came from, it was a great secret to eat government food. As I grew older, I realized that such secrets have power over us. Get it out. Act it out.
You're doing great work. I'm impressed.
Resteemed and upvoted.