I'll follow up with a solution to this problem for anyone else who needs to implement a similar node.  
First, make sure you add your loadable configuration, `load_params.y[a]ml` to your `config` folder, as such:
```
colcon_ws
└── src
    ├── my_pkg
    │   ├── config
    │   │   └── load_params.yml
    │   ├── my_pkg
    │   │   ├── __init__.py
    │   │   ├── my_node.py
    │   │   └── __pycache__
    │   │       ├── __init__.cpython-38.pyc
    │   │       └── my_node.cpython-38.pyc
    │   ├── launch
    │   │   ├── backend_launcher.launch.py
    │   │   └── frontend_launcher.launch.xml
    │   ├── package.xml
    │   ├── resource
    │   │   └── my_pkg
    │   ├── setup.cfg
    │   ├── setup.py
    │   └── test
    │       ├── test_copyright.py
    │       ├── test_flake8.py
    │       └── test_pep257.py
```
In your `setup.py`, modify it accordingly to have a copy of `config` in your `install` share space (doesn't hurt to add your launchers too):
```python
import os
from glob import glob
...
setup(
    name=package_name,
    version='0.0.0',
    packages=[package_name],
    data_files=[
        ('share/ament_index/resource_index/packages',
            ['resource/' + package_name]),
        ('share/' + package_name, ['package.xml']),
        # Include all configuration files
        ('share/' + package_name + '/config', glob('config/*')),
        # Include all launch files
        (os.path.join('share', package_name, 'launch'), glob(os.path.join('launch', '*launch.[pxy][yma]*')))
    ],
    ...
)
```
Once you've done this, you can invoke, in *any* Python file that you have placed in `install` (be it a node or launch.py) the following:
```python
import yaml
from ament_index_python.packages import get_package_share_directory
...
share_dir = get_package_share_directory(PKG_NAME) # modify this accordingly
fname = share_dir + f"/config/load_params.yaml" # use os.path.join if you want
with open(fname, 'r') as file:
  configs = yaml.safe_load(file)
# # note that you will most likely extract a field as the following
# # or, using ['<ns>/<node>'] instead of ['/**'] 
# # you can also simply discard the typical ros2 param syntax 
# # # if you won't use any of the fields in a parameter declaration
# config_field = configs['/**']['ros__parameters']['field_name']
```
Using this in launch backends helps with conditional statements tied in with launch file generation that are **not** intrinsic properties of the sub-launch files themselves (e.g. how many launch files are you spawning).  
In nodes, this allows your nodes to access *configurations* rather than *node parameters*, according to the distinction made in [the previously given answer](https://robotics.stackexchange.com/a/107852/31285)  
Hope this helps anyone else who is stumped!