You can do both in unsafe rust though. But you probably shouldn't no matter what high level non-GCd language you use.
/Another ex-cpp-master-race guy who has been impressed with Rust
Specifically, the discussion about intrusive vs non-intrusive data structures and their frequency.
However, if you're developing for embedded you'll probably want to be familiar with unsafe either way if you're going to use Rust.
Regarding self-referencing: Rust encourages you to design differently, which I've found leads to nicer and more thought out designs most of the time. Not all algorithms are possible (or efficient) without it though, and for those you'll have to use unsafe if you _really_ have to implement them yourself.