I came across this long proof on this site:
But I would like to know whether my direction can work.
Say we want to find the cardinality of all equivalence relations in $\mathbb{N}$. Since it is a subset of all relations in $\mathbb{N}$, I conclude it has a cardinality smaller or equal to $\aleph$. Now, define an injective function from $P(\mathbb{N})$ to the set of equivalence relations by matching each subset of $\mathbb{N}$ with the identity relation (which is an equivalence relation in $\mathbb{N}$.
Therefore the cardinality of all equivalence relations in $\mathbb{N}$ is greater or equal to $\aleph$ and using CSB we get the desired result.
Seems legit?