We investigate how autobiographical stories of meaningful life events differ from other stories, and how the emotional dynamics of these stories shift when retold by the same narrators. Participants were initially asked to write down a personally meaningful memory. Later, they were invited to retell the same memory. As a baseline, we analyzed a previously collected set of stories that emphasized sentiment (sad vs. happy) but not meaningfulness. To examine emotional patterns, we utilized self-reported emotions, external ratings on core emotions, and sentiment analysis of stories, capturing both overall sentiment and emotional shifts within each story. Our findings showed that meaningful memories tend to be more positive than baseline stories, with a notable increase in positive emotions toward the end of the stories. However, in retelling, both positive and negative core emotions decreased. We suggest that the telling and retelling of a meaningful memory has therapeutic effects that emphasize positive sentiments, while decreasing the emotions to allow for a reframing of the memory.