I've started again after about 15 yrs, too, due to insurance issues. Retelling your story is okay, depending on who you tell it to. I liked the book about inner child work by John Bradshaw, but for one thing. It needs to include your therapist, not a do-it-yourself- project. How your inner child feels about the therapist is so important to healing. That's the part that took the beating years ago, and feels both hope and fear with the therapist. Feeling this and discussing it is what restructures and transforms your feelings about all that happened in the past that causes problems now. I have a way to go myself, but working on it with my T.