This dichotomy between “opening” and “previewing” a card has taken me awhile to get used to and is still a point of friction with the app (which overall I still love). The inability to see both backlinks and child cards at the same time is a particular sticking point with me. I’ll quote myself from here:
I wish backlinks on a parent card were visible when that card is being viewed. Backlinks are only visible on child cards below the parent card, or in preview mode. When the card is “opened” there no indication that links to it even exist. Conversely, child cards are not visible in preview mode. Feels like a mistake/oversight, and hampers the way I would like to use Supernotes: I want to be able to link to ”topic” cards and be confident that if I view the topic card I’ll know about all backlinks and child cards right away.