I like what you've said here. I'm starting to learn a lot about myself and the way I suppress anger in my significant relationships, because I hate to rock the boat. I grew pleasing people, part of the residue of abandonment by an AF. You know, if you please people, they'll like you and not reject you in any way...that's one of the ways my very young little mind learned to deal with abandonment.
So, in working on my abandonment issues, I have been doing a lot of reading. What you say here about using anger to create positive and beautiful things reminds me of something I read recently.
In abandonment grief, which has its unique characteristics, we go through stages of interalizing our anger (blaming ourselves for what has happened) but then we go through stages of turning our anger into useful energy...energy that helps us to fight for something to be gained as opposed to hanging on to something that we have lost.
This was a pretty important concept for me to latch on to and learn to make use of. My counselor had been saying to me, "I wish you would just get angry with (XABF)." I was giving him so much emotional power by not letting myself feel angry. But when I learned that I could use the anger to FIGHT for something to be GAINED, it was like a lightbulb went on. No more hiding anger to please others is pretty empowering.
Your "coal into diamonds" philosophy is the same idea. Pretty cool and amazing that you were able to process this and create this for yourself as a kid.